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TRt.Nj^EEKLY PuSLtCKTlOf/ Of^ TKE 8g,ST COK>lE»V^ £v.STANjMTCDl.'y£/<.^TUag 







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sat CLOTH BINDING for this vohinte can bo obtainod from any bookseller or newsdsalerf price lOcts* 



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" I>r. Newton has had ^iv«ii to him the spiritual 
sense of what people wanted, and this he has rer- 
erently, elearlj and definitely furnished." — Boiton 
ffgraJdy March 17. 



THE RIGHT AND WRONG 



SES 






I 



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By Kevo R. Heber Ne"wton 



No. 83. ** Loybll's Library," Paper Ooybrs, 20 Cekts; Also 
IN Cloth, Rbd Sdges, 75 Cents. 



** Dr. Newton has not separated his heart from his head in these 
religious studies, and has thus been preserYed from the mis 
which a purely critical mind might haYe been led."— JTo T. jme», 
March 12. 

"Those who wish to abuse Br. Newton should do so before 
reading his lectures, as, after reading them, they may find it quite 
impossible to do so." — N, T. Sta/r, March 11. 

** It is impossible to read these sermons without high admiration 
of th« author's courage ; of his honesty, his reverential spirit, his 
wide and careful reading, and his true conserYatism," — Ameriean 
IMwmy Ghv/rchman. 

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n. 

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19. 
80. 

21. 

22. 

23. 

24. 

25. 

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28. 

29. 

30. 

31. 
32. 

33. 
34. 



35. 

3f). 

37. 
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4J. 



41. 

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43. 
44. 



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INDIA: 

What Can it Teach us? 



BY 



U MAX MiJLLER. 



// 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN \Y. LOVELL COMPANY, 

14 AND 16 Vesey Street. 






Vf,^ 



'b 



1> 



<h 



CV 



DEDICATION. 



MV DEAR COWELL, 

As these Lectures would never have been written 
or delivered but for your hearty encouragement, I 
hope you will now allow me to dedicate them to you, 
not only as a token of my sincere admiration of your 
great achievements as an Oriental scholar, but also as 
a memorial of your friendship now more than thirty 
years old, a friendship which has grown from year to 
year, has weathered many a storm, and will last, I 
trust, for what to both of us may remain of our short 
passage from shore to shore. 

I must add, however, that in dedicating these 
Lectures to you, I do not wish to throw upon you any 
responsibilities for the views which I have put for- 
ward in them. I know that you do not agree with 
some of my views on the ancient religion and litera- 
ture of India, and I am well aware that with regard to 
the recent date which! have assigned to the whole 
of what is commonly called the Classical Sanskrit Lit- 
erature, I stand almost alone. No, if friendship can 
claim any voice in the courts of science and litera- 
ture, let me assure you that I shall consider your out- 
spoken criticism of my Lectures as the very best 
proof of your truth and honest friendship. I have 



4 DEDICATION, 

through life considered it the greatest honor if real 
scholars, I mean men not only of learning, but of 
judgment and character, have considered my writings 
worthy of a severe and searching criticism, and I have 
cared far more for the production of one single new 
fact, though it spoke against me, than for any amount 
of empty praise or empty abuse. Sincere devotion to 
his studies and an unswerving love of truth ought to 
furnish the true scholar with an armor impermeable 
to flattery or abuse, and with a vizor that shuts out 
no ray of light, from whatever quarter it may come. 
More light, more truth, more facts, more combination 
of facts, these are his quest. And if in that quest he 
fails, as many have failed before him, he knows that 
in the search of truth failures are sometimes the con- 
dition of victory, and the true conquerors often those 
whom the world calls the vanquished. 

You know better than anybody else the present 
state of Sanskrit scholarship. You know that at pres- 
ent and for some time to come Sanskrit scholarship 
means discovery and conquest. Every one of your 
own works mark a real advance, and a permanent 
occupation of new ground. But you know also how 
small a strip has as yet been explored of the vast 
continent of Sanskrit literature, and how much still 
remains terra incognita. No doubt this exploring 
work is troublesome, and often disappointing, but 
young students must learn the truth of a remark lately 
made by a distinguished member of the Indian 
Civil Service, whose death we all deplore, Dr. Burnell, 
" that nc trouble is thrown away which saves trouble 
to otheri." We want men who will work hard, even 
at the risk of seeing their labors unrequited ; we 



DEDICA TIOiV, 5 

want strong and bold men who are not afraid of 
storms and shipwrecks. The worst sailors are not 
those who suffer shipwreck, but those who only dab- 
ble in puddles and are afraid of wetting their feet. 

It is easy now to criticise the labors of Sir William 
Jones, Thomas Colebrooke, and Horace Hayman Wil- 
son, but what would have become of Sanskrit scholar- 
ship if they had not rushed in where even now so 
many fear to tread ? and what will become of Sanskrit 
scholarship if their conquests are for ever to mark the 
limits of our knowledge. You know best that there is 
more to be discovered in Sanskrit literature than Nalas 
and Sakuntalas, and surely the young men who every 
year go out to India are not deficient in the spirit of en- 
terprise or even of adventure } Why then should it be 
said that the race of blood explorers, who once ren, 
dered the name of the Indian Civil Service illustrious 
over the whole world, has well-nigh become extinct, 
and that England, which offers the strongest incen- 
tives and the most brilliant opportunities for the 
study of the ancient language, literature, and history 
of India, is no longer in the van of Sanskrit scholar- 
ship } 

If some of the young Candidates for the Indian Civil 
Service who Hstened to my Lectures, quietly made 
up their minds that such a reproach shall be wiped out^ 
if a few of them at least determined to follow in the 
footsteps of Sir William Jones, and to show to the 
world that Englishmen who have been able to achieve 
by pluck, by perseverance, and by real political genius 
the material conquest of India, do not mean to leave 
the laurels of its intellectual conquest entirely to other 
PQuntries, then I §hall indeed rejoice, and feel that I 



g VEDJCATJON. 

have paid back, in however small a degree, the large 
debt of gratitude which I owe to my adopted country 
and to some of its greatest statesmen, who have given 
me the opportunity which I could find nowhere else of 
reahsing the dreams of my life — the publication of the 
text and commentary of the Rig-veda, the most ancient 
book of Sanskrit, aye of Aryan literature, and now the 
edition of the translations of the " Sacred Books of the 
East." 

I have left my Lectures very much as I delivered 
them at Cambridge. I am fond of the form of Lec- 
tures, because it seems to me the most natural form 
which in our age didactic composition ought to take. 
As in ancient Greece the dialogue reflected most truly 
the intellectual life of the people, and as in the Middle 
Ages learned literature naturally assumed with the 
recluse in his monastic cell the form of a long mono- 
logue, so with us the lecture places the writer most 
readily in that position in which he is accustomed to 
deal with his fellow-men, and to communicate his 
knowledge to others. It has no doubt certain disad- 
vantasces. In a lecture which is meant to be didactic 
we have, for the sake of completeness, to say and to 
repeat certain things which must be familiar to some 
of our readers, while we are also forced to leave out 
information which, even in its imperfect form, we 
should probably not hesitate to submit to our fellow- 
students, but which we feel we have not yet suffi- 
ciently mastered and matured to enable us to place it 
clearly and simply before a larger public. 

But the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. 
A lecture, by keeping a critical audience constantly 
before our eyes, forces us to condease our subject, tQ 



DEDTCA TfOJ^, f 

discriminate between what is important and what is 
not, and often to deny ourselves the pleasure of display- 
ing what may have cost us the greatest labor, but is 
of little consequence to other scholars. In lecturing 
we are constantly reminded of what students are so 
apt to forget, that their knowledge is meant not for 
themselves only but for others, and that to know well 
means to be able to teach well. I confess I can 
never write unless I think of somebody for whom I 
write, and I should never wish for a better audience 
to have before my mind than the learned, brilliant, 
and kind-hearted assembly by which I was greeted 
in 3'our University. 

Yours affectionately, 
F. MAX MULLER, 

Oxford, 
December i6, 1882. 






WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US? 



When I received from the Board of Historical 
Studies at Cambridge the invitation to deliver a course 
of lectures, specially intended for the Candidates for 
the Indian Civil Service, I hesitated for some time feel- 
ing extremely doubtful whether in a few public dis- 
courses I could say anything that would be of real 
use to them in passing their examinations. To enable 
young men to pass their examinations seems now to 
have become the chief, if not the only object of the 
Universities ; and to no class of students is it of great- 
er importance to pass their examinations, and to pass 
them well, than to the Candidates for the Indian 
Civil Service. 

But although I was afraid that attendance on a 
few public lectures, such as I could give, would hardly 
benefit a Candidate who was not already fully prepared 
to pass through th$ fiery ordeal of the three Lon- 
don examinations, I could not on the other hand shut 
my eyes completely to the flct that, after all, Univer- 
sities were not meant entirely, or even chiefly, as 
stepping stones to an examination, but that there is 



i# WJ/A T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

something else which Universities can teach and 
ought to teach — nay, which I feel quite sure they 
were originally meant to teach-something that may 
not have a marketable value before a Board of Exa- 
miners, but which has a permanent value for the 
whole of our life, and that is a real interest in our 
work, and more than that, a love of our work and, 
more than that, a true joy and happiness in our 
work. If a University can teach that, if it can 
engraft that one small living germ in the minds of the 
young men who come here to study and to prepare 
themselves for the battle of life, and for what is still 
more difficult to encounter, the daily dull drudgery 
of life, then, I feel convinced, a University has done 
more, and conferred a more lasting benefit on its 
pupils than by helping them to pass the most diffi- 
cult examinations, and to take the highest place among 
Senior Wranglers or First-Class men. 

Unfortunately that kind of work which is now 
required for passing one examination after another, 
that process of cramming and crowding which has 
of late been brought to the highest pitch of perfec- 
tion, has often the very opposite effect, and instead 
of exciting an appetite for work, it is apt to produce 
an indifference, if not a kind of intellectual nausea, 
that may last for life. 

And nowhere is this so much to be feared as in 
the case of Candidates for the Indian Civil Service. 
After they have passed their first examination for ad- 
mission to the Indian Civil Service, and given proof 
that they have received the benefits of a liberal educa- 
tion and acquired that general information in classics* 
history^'.and mathematics, which is provided at our 
Public Schools, and forms no doubt the best and 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f il 

surest foundation for all more special and professional 
studies in later life, they suddenly find themselves 
torn away from their old studies and their old friends 
and compelled to take up new subjects which to many 
of them seem strange, outlandish, if not repulsive. 
Strange alphabets, strange languages, strange names 
strange literatures and laws have be faced, *^to be got 
up " as it is called, not from choice, but from dire 
necessity. The whole course of study during two years 
is determined for them, the subjects fixed, the books 
prescribed, the examinations regulated, and there is no 
time to look either right or left, if a candidate wishes 
to make sure of taking each successive fence in good 
style, and without an accident. 

I know quite well that it cannot be helped. I am 
not speaking against the system of examinations in 
general, if only they are intelligently conducted ; nayi 
as an old examiner myself, I feel bound to say that 
the amount of knowledge produced ready-made at 
these examinations is to my mind perfectly astound- 
ing. But while the answers are there on paper, 
strings of dates, lists of royal names and battles, 
irregular verbs, statistical figures and whatever else 
you like, how seldom do we find that the heart of the 
candidates is in the work which they have to do. 
The results produced are certainly most ample and 
voluminous, but they rarely contain a spark of original 
thought, or even a clever mistake. It is work done 
from necessity, or, let us be just, from a sense of duty, 
but it is seldom, or hardly ever, a labor of love. 

•Now, why should that be .^ Why should a study of 
Greek and Latin,— of the poetry, the philosophy, the 
laws and the art of Greece and Italy,-— seem congenial 
,to us, why should it excite even a certain enthusiasm, 



IVHA T CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

and command general respect, while a study of San- 
skrit, and the ancient poetry, the philosophy, the laws, 
and the art of India is looked upon, in the best case, 
as curious, but is considered by most people as useless, 
tedious, if not absurd. 

And, strange to say, this feeling exists in England 
more than in any other country. In France, Germany* 
and Italy, even in Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, 
there is a vague charm connected with the name of 
India. One of the most beautiful poems in the Ger- 
man language is the Weisheit der Brahmaneii, the 
" Wisdom of the Brahmans," by Ruckert, to my mind 
more rich in thought and more perfect in form than 
even Goethe's West-ostlicher Divan. A scholar who 
studies Sanskrit in Germany is supposed to be 
initiated in the deep and dark mysteries of ancient 
wisdom, and a man who has travelled in India, even 
if he has only discovered Calcutta, or Bombay, or 
Madras, is listened to like another Marco Polo. In 
England a student of Sanskrit is generally considered 
a bore, and an old Indian Civil servant, if he begins 
to describe the marvels of Elephanta or the towers 
of Silence, runs the risk of producing a count-out. 

There are indeed a few Oriental scholars whose 
works are read, and who have acquired a certain 
celebrity in England, because they were really men 
of uncommon genius, and would have ranked among 
the great glories of the country, but for the misfor- 
tune that their energies were devoted to Indian 
literature — I mean Sir William. Jones, " one of the 
most enlightened of the sons of men," as Dr. Johnson 
called him, and Thomas Col ebrooke. But the names 
of others who have done good work in their day also, 
men such as Ballantyne, Buchanan, Carey, Crawfurd, 



mi AT CAN INDIA 7^1^ AC II US? 13 

Davis, Elliot, Ellis, Houghton, Leyden, Mackenzie, 
Marsden, Muir, Prinsep, Rennell, Turnour, Upham, 
Wallich, Warren, Wilkins, Wilson, and many others, 
are hardly known beyond the small circle of Oriental 
scholars, and their works are looked for in vain in 
libraries which profess to represent with a certain 
completeness the principal branches of scholarship 
and science in England. 

How many times when I advised young men, can- 
didates for the Indian Civil Service, to devote them- 
selves before all things to a study of Sanskrit, have I 
been told, " What is the use of our studying Sanskrit ? 
There are translations of ^akuntald, Manu, and the 
Hitopadei'a, and what else is there in that literature 
that is worth reading ? K^liddsa may be very pretty, 
and the Laws of Manu are very curious, and the fa- 
bles of the Hitopadej'a are very quaint ; but you would 
not compare Sanskrit literature with Greek, or recom- 
mend us to waste our time in copying and editing 
Sanskrit texts which either teach us nothing that we 
do not know already, or teach us something which 
we do not care to know ? " 

This seems to me a most unhappy misconception, 
and it will be the chief object of my lectures to try to re- 
move it, or at all events to modify it, as much as pos- 
sible. I shall not attempt to prove that Sanskrit litera- 
ture is as good as Greek literature. Why should we 
always compare .'* A study of Greek literature has its 
own purpose, and a study of Sanskrit literature has its 
own purpose ; but what I feel convinced of, and hope to 
xonvince you of, is that Sanskrit literature, if studied 
only in a right spirit, is full of human interests, full 
of lessons which even Greek could never teach us, a 



i 4 ^fV/TA T CAN IIVDIA TEA CI/ US f 

subject worthy to occupy the leisure, and more than 
the leisure, of every Indian Civil servant ; and certainly 
the best means of making any young man who has to 
spend five-and-twenty years of his life in India, feel 
at home among the Indians, as a fellow-worker among 
fellow-workers, and not as an alien among aliens. 
There will be abundance of useful and most interesting 
work for him to do, if only he cares to do it, work such 
as he would look for in vain, whether in Italy or in 
Greece, or even among the pyramids of Egypt or the 
palaces of Babylon. 

You- will now understand why I have chosen as 
the title of my lectures, What can India teach tis ? True 
there are many things which India has to learn from 
us ; but there are other things, and in one sense, very 
important things, which we, too, many learn from 
India. 

If I were to look over the whole world to find out 
the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, 
power, and beauty that nature can bestow — in some 
parts a very paradise on earth — I should point to 
India, If I were asked under what sky the human 
mind has most fully developed some of its choicest 
gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest pro- 
blems of life, and has found solutions of some of 
them which well deserve the attention even of those 
who have studied Plato and Kant — T should point to 
India. And if I were to ask myself from what 
literature we, here in Europe, we who have been 
nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks 
and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may 
draw that corrective which is most wanted in order"' 
to make our inner life more perfect, more com- 



W.^AT CAN iS'btA f&ACtr Vsf tj 

prehehsive, more universal, in fact more truly human, 
a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and 
eternal life — again I should point to India. 

I know you will be surprised to hear me say this. 
I know that more particularly those who have spent 
many years of active life in Calcutta, or Bombay, or 
Madras, will be horror-struck at the idea that the hu- 
manity they meet with there, whether in the bazaars 
or in the courts of justice, or in so-called native 
society, should be able to teach ils any lessons. 

Let me therefore explain at once to my friends 
who may have lived in India for years, as civil servants, 
or officers, or missionaries, or merchants, and who 
ought to know a great deal more of that country than 
one who has never set foot on the soil of Arydvarta, 
that we are speaking of two very different Indias. I 
am thinking chiefly of India, such as it was a thous- 
and, two thousand, it may be three thousand years 
ago ; they think of the India of to-day. And again, 
when thinking of the India of to-day, they remember 
chiefly the India of Calcutta, Bombay, or Madras, the 
India of the towns. I look to the India of the village 
communities, the true India of the Indians. 

What I wish to show to you, I mean more espe- 
cially the candidates for the India Civil Service, is 
that this India of a thousand, or two thousand, or 
three thousand years ago, aye the India of to-day also, 
if only you know where to look for it, is full of pro- 
blems the solution of which concerns all of us, even 
us in this Europe of the nineteenth century. 

If you have acquired any special tastes here in 
England, you will find plenty to satisfy them in India; 
and whoever has learnt to take an interest in any of 



V 
to ^//^ T CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

the great problems that occupy the best thinkers and 
workers at home, need certainly not be afraid of India 
proving to him an intellectual exile. 

If you care for geology, there is work for you from 
the Himalayas to Ceylon. 

If you are fond of botany, there is a flora rich 
enough for many Hookers. 

If you are a zoologist, think of Haeckel, who is just 
now rushing through Indian forests and dredging in 
Indian seas, and to whom his stay in India is like the 
realization of the brightest dream of his life. 

If you are interested in Ethnology, why India is 
like a living ethnological museum. 

If you are fond of Archaeology, if you have ever 
assisted at the opening of a barrow in England, and 
know the delight of finding a fibula, or a knife, or a 
flint in a heap of rubbish, read only ' General Cunn- 
ingham's Annual Reports of the Archaeological Survey 
of India,' and you will be impatient for the time when 
you can take your spade and bring to light the ancient 
Vihdras or Colleges built by the Buddhist monarchs 
of India. 

If ever you amused yourselves with collecting 
coins, why the soil of India teems with coins, Persian, 
Carian, Thracian, Parthian, Greek, Macedonian, 
Scythian, Roman* and Mohammedan. When Warren 
Hastings was Governor-General, an earthen pot was 
found on the bank of a river in the province of Be- 
nares, containing 172 gold Darics.f Warren Hastings 

* Pliny (VI. 26) tells us that m his day the annual drain of bullion 
into India, in return for her valuable produce, reached the immense 
amount of * five hundred and fifty millions of sesterces. See E. 
Thomas, The Indian Balhard, p. 13. 

t Cunningham, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1S81, 



W//A T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? j t 

considered hiroself as making the most munificent 
present to his masters that he might ever have it in 
his power to send them, by presenting those ancient 
coins to the Court of Directors. The story is that 
they were sent to the melting pot. At all events 
they had disappeared when Warren Hastings returned 
to England. It rests with you to prevent the revival 
of such Vandalism. 

In one of the last numbers of the 'Asiatic Journal 
of Bengal ' you may read of the discovery of a treasure 
as rich in gold almost as some of the tombs opened 
by Dr. Schliemann at Mykenae, nay I should add, per- 
haps not quite unconnected with some of the treas. 
ures found at Mykenae ; yet hardly any one has taken 
notice of it in England ! 

The study of Mythology has assumed an entirely 
new character, chiefly owing to the light that has 
been thrown on it by the ancient Vedic Mythology 
of India. But though the foundation of a true Science 
of Mythology has been laid, all the detail has still to 
be v\rorked out, and could be worked out nowhere bet- 
ter than in India. 

Even the study of fables owes its new life to India, 
from whence the various migrations of fables have 
been traced at various times and through various 
channels from East to West, f Buddhism is now 
known to have been the principal source of our legends 
and parables. But here too, many problems still 
wait for their solution. Think, for instance, of the 
allusion % to the fable of the donkey in the lion's 

t See Selected Essays, vol. i, p. 509, 'The Migration of Fables.* 

I Cratylus 411 A, *' still, as I have put on the lion's skin, I must 

not be faint-hearted." Possibly, however, this may refer to 



iS WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us f 

skin, which occurs in Plato's Cratylus. Was that 
borrowed from the East ? Or take the fable of the 
weasel changed by Aphrodite into a woman who, 
when she saw a mouse, could not refrain from making a 
spring at it. This, too, is very like a Sanskrit fable, 
but how then could it have been brought into Greece 
early enough to appear in one of the comedies of 
Strattis, about 400 b. c. ? * Here, too, there is still 
plenty of work to do. 

We may go back even further into antiquity, and 
still find strange coincidences between the legends 
of India and the legends of the West, without as yet 
being able to say how they travelled, whether from 
East to West, or from West to East. That at the 
time of Solomon, there was a channel of communica- 
tion open between India and Syria and Palestine is 
established beyond doubt, I believe, by certain Sanskrit 
words which occur in the Bible as names of articles 
of export from Ophir, articles such as ivory, apes, 
peacocks, and sandalwood, which, taken together, 
could not have been exported from any country but 
India . f Nor is there any reason to suppose that the 
commercial intercourse between India, the Persian 
Gulf, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean was ever 

Hercules, and not to the fable of the donkey in the lion's or the tiger's 
skin. In the Hitopade.fa, a donkey, being nearly starved, is sent by 
his master into a cornfield to feed. In order to shield him he puts a 
tiger's skin on him. All goes well till a watchman approaches, hiding 
himself under his grey coat,'-and trying to shoot the tiger. Thedonke} 
thinks it is a grey female donkey, begins to bray, and is killed. On a 
similar fable in ^sop, see Benfey, Pantschatantra, vol. I, p, 463; ^ 
M. M., Selected Essays, vol. I, p. 513. 

* See Fragmenta Comic. (Didot) p. 302 ; Benfey, 1. c. vol, I p. 374. 

t Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. I. p. 231. 



IVI/A T CAN INDIA TEA CH USf 1 5 

completely interrupted, even at the time when the 
Book of Kings is supposed to have been written. 

Now, you remember the judgment of Solomon, which 
has always been admired as a proof of great legal 
wisdom among the Jews.* I must confess that, not 
having a legal mind, I never could suppress a certain 
shudder when reading the decision of Solomon : 
" Divide the living child in two, and give half to the 
one, and half to the other." 

Let me now tell you the same story as it is told by 
the Buddhists, whose sacred Canon is full of such 
legends and parables. In the Kanjur, which is the 
Tibetan translation of the Buddhist Tripi/aka, we 
likewise read of two women who claimed each to be 
the mother of the same child. The king, after listen- 
ing to their quarrels for a long time, gave it up as 
hopeless to settle who was the real mother. Upon 
this Vi.rakha stepped forward and said : " What is the 
use of examining and cross-examining these women. 
Let them take the boy and settle it among themselves." 
Thereupon both women fell on the child, and when 
the fight became violent, the child was hurt and began 
to cry. Then one of them let him go, because she 
could not bear to hear the child cry. 

That settled the question. The king gave the child 
to the true mother, and had the other beaten with a 
rod. 

This seems to me, if not the more primitive, yet the 
more natural form of the story — showing a deeper 
knowledge of human nature, and more wisdom than 
even the wisdom of Solomon.f 

■ * I Kings iji. 25. 
t See some excellent remarks on this subject in Rhys Davids. B»4d- 



2 o ^IJ'A T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

Many of you may have studied not only languages, 
but also the Science of Language, and is there any 
country in which some of the most important problems 
of that science, say only the growth and decay of 
dialects, or the possible mixture of languages, with re- 
gard not only to words, but to grammatical elements 
also, can be studied to greater advantage than among 
the Aryan, the Dravidian and the Mu/^da inhabitants 
of India, when brought in contact with their various 
invaders and conquerors, the Greeks, the Yue-tchi, 
the Arabs, the Persians, the Moguls, and lastly the 
English. 

Again, if you are a student of Jurisprudence, there 
is a history of law to be explored in India, very differ- 
ent from what is known of the history of law in Greece, 
in Rome, and in Germany, yet both by its contrasts 
and by its similarities full of suggestions to the stu- 
dent of Comparative Jurisprudence. New materials 
are being discovered every year, as, for instance, the 
so-called Dharma or Samaya>^arika Sz^tras, which have 
supplied the materials for the later metrical law-books, 
such as the famous Laws of Manu. What was once 
called "The Code of Laws of Manu," and confidently 
referred to 1200, or at least 500 b. c, is now hesita- 
tingly referred to perhaps the fourth century a. d., and 
called neither a Code, nor a Code of Laws, least of all, 
the Code of Laws of Manu. 

: If you have learnt to appreciate the value of recent 
researches into the antecedents of all laws, namely the 

hist Birth Stories, vol. i, pp. xiii and xliv. The learned scholar 
gives another version of the story from a Singhalese translation ©f the 
Gataka,dating from the fourteenth century, and he expresses a hope that 
11. I'ausboll will soon publish the Pali original. 



limA T CAN WD I A TEA CIT t7S9 a 

foundation and growth of the simplest political com- 
munities — and nowhere could you have had better 
opportunities for it than here at Cambridge — you will 
find a field of observation opened before you in the 
still existing village estates in India that will amply re- 
pay careful research. 

And take that which, after all, whether we con- 
fess or deny it, we care for more in this life than for 
anything else — nay, which is often far more cared for 
by those who deny than by those who confess — take 
that which supports, prevades, and directs all our 
acts and thoughts and hopes — without which there 
can be neither village community nor empire, neither 
custom nor law, neither right nor wrong — take that 
which, next to language, has most firmly fixed the 
specific and permanent barrier between man and beast 
— which alone has made life possible and bearable, 
and which, as it is the deepest, though often hidden 
springs of individual life, is also the foundation of all 
national life, — the history of all histories, and yet the 
mystery of all mysteries — take religion, and where 
can you study its true origin, its natural growth, and 
its inevitable decay better than in India, the home of 
Brahmanism, the birthplace of Buddhism, and the 
refuge of Zoroastrianism, even now the mother of 
new superstitions — and why not, in the future, the 
regenerate child of the purest faith, if only purified 
from the dust of nineteen centuries ? 

You will find yourselves everywhere in India be. 
tween an immense past and an immense future, with op- 
portunities such as the old world could but seldom, if 
ever, offer you. Take any of the burning questions 
of the day — popular education, higher education, par- 



^4 IVI/AT CAA^ hvDlA TKACH VS't 

liamentary representation, codification oflaws,fjnaricej 
emigration, poor-law, and whether you have anything 
to teach and to try, or anything to observe and to 
learn, India will supply you with a laboratory such as 
exists nowhere else. That very Sanskrit, the study 
of which may at first seem so tedious to you and so 
useless, if only you will carry it on as you may carry 
it on here at Cambridge better than anywhere else, 
will open before you large layers of literature, as yet 
almost unknown and unexplored, and allow you an in- 
sight into strata of thought deeper than any you 
have known before, and rich in lessons that appeal to 
the deepest sympathies of the human heart. 

Depend upon it, if only you can make leisure, you 
will find plenty of work in India for your leisure 
hours. 

India is not, as you may imagine, a distant, strange, 
or, at the very utmost, a curious country. India for 
the future belongs to Europe, it has its place in the 
Indo-European world, it has its place in our own his- 
tory, and in what is the very life of history, the history 
of the human mind. 

You know how some of the best talent and the 
noblest genius of our age has been devoted to the 
study of the development of the outward or material 
world, the growth of the earth, the first appearance of 
living cells, their combination and differentiation 
leading up to the beginning of organic life, and its 
steady progress from the lowest to the highest stages. 
Is there not an inward and intellectual world also 
which has to be studied in its historical develop- 
ment, from the first appearance of predicative and 
demonstrative roots, their combination and differen* 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us 1 35 

tiatipn, leading up to the beginning of rational thoughts 
in its steady progress from the lowest to the highest 
stages ? And in that study of the history of the 
human mind, in that study of ourselves, of our 
true selves, India occupies a place second to no other 
country. Whatever sphere of the human mind you 
may select for your special study, v^hether it be Ian" 
guage, or religion, or mythology, or philosophy, 
whether it be laws or customs, primitive art or primi- 
tive science, everywhere, you have to go to India, 
whether you like it or not, because some of the most 
valuable and most instructive materials in the history 
of man are treasured up in India, and India only. 

And while thus trying to explain to those whose 
lot will soon be cast in India the true position which 
that wonderful country holds or ought to hold in uni- 
versal history, I may perhaps be able at the same time 
to appeal to the sympathies of other members of this 
University, by showing them how imperfect our know- 
ledge of universal history, our insight into the develop- 
ment of the human intellect, must always remain, if 
we narrow our horizon to the history of Greeks and 
Romans, Saxons and Celts, with a dim background of 
Palestine, Egypt, and Babylon, and leave out of sight 
our nearest intellectual relatives, the Aryans of India, 
the framers of the most wonderful language, the San- 
skrit, the fellow-workers in the construction of our 
fundamental concepts, the fathers of the most natural 
of natural religions, the maker of the most trans- 
parent of mythologies, the inventors of the most 
subtle philosophy, and the givers of the most elaborate 
laws. 

Jhere at-e many things which we think essential in 



24 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH C/Sf 

a liberal education, whole chapters of history which we 
teach in our schools and universities, that cannot for 
one moment compare with the chapter relating to 
India, if only properly understood and freely inter- 
preted. 

In our time, when the study of history threatens to 
become almost an impossibility — such is the mass of 
details which historians collect in archives and pour 
out before us in monographs — it seems to me more 
than ever the duty of the true historian to find out 
the real proportion of things, to arrange his materials 
according to the strictest rules of artistic perspec- 
tive, and to keep completely out of sight all that may 
be rightly ignored by us in our own passage across 
^the historical stage of the world. It is this power of 
discovering what is really important that distinguishes 
the true historian from the mere chronicler, in whose 
eyes everything is important, particularly if lie has 
discovered it himself. I think it was Frederick the 
Great who, when sighing for a true historian of his 
reign, complained bitterly that those who wrote the 
history of Prussia never forgot to describe the but- 
tons on his uniform. And it is probably of such his- 
torical works that Carlyle was thinking when he said 
that he had waded through them all, but that nothing 
should ever induce him to hand even their names and 
titles down to posterity. And yet how much is there 
even in Carlyle's histories that might safely be con- 
signed to oblivion ! 

Why do we want to know history } Why does 
history forma recognized part of ourliberal education } 
Simply because all of us, and every one of us, ought 
|0 knovy how we have conie to be what we are, so 



1 



tP'ITAJ' CAN INDIA TMACII l/Sf ^^ 

that each generation need not start again from the 
same point, and toil over the same ground, but, profit- 
ing by the experience of those who came before, may 
advance towards higher points and nobler aims. As 
a child when growing up, might ask his father or 
grandfather, w/w had built the house they lived in, 
or who had cleared the field that yielded them their 
food, we ask the historian whence we came, and how 
we came into possession of what we call our own. 
History may tell us afterwards many useful and 
amusing things, gossip, such as a child might like to 
hear from his mother or grandmother ; but what his- 
tory has to teach us before all and everything, is our 
own antecedents, our own ancestors, our own descent. 

Now our principal intellectual ancestors are, no 
doubt, the yews, the GreekSy the Romajts, and the 
Saxons, and we, here in Europe, should not call a 
man educated or enlightened who was ignorant of 
the debt which he owes to his intellectual ancestors in 
Palestine, Greece, Rome, and Germany. The whole 
past history of the world would be darkness to him, 
and not knowing what those who came before him 
had done for him, he would probably care little to do 
anything for those who are to come after him. Life 
would be to him a chain of sand, while it ought to be 
a kind of electric chain that makes our hearts tremble 
and vibrate with the most ancient thoughts of the 
past, as well as with the most distant hopes of the 
future. 

Let us begin with our religion. No one can under- 
stand even the historical possibility of the Christian 
religion without knowing something of the Jewish 
race, which must be studied chiefly in the pages of 



26 ti^^A T CAN INDIA TEA CH ITSf 

the Old Testament. And in order to appreciate the 
true relation of the Jews to the rest of the ancient 
world, and to understand what ideas were peculiarly 
their own arid what ideas they shared in common 
with the other members of the Semitic stock, or what 
moral and religious impulses they received from their 
historical contact with other nations of antiquity, it 
is absolutely necessary that we should pay some 
attention to the history of Babylon, Nineveh, Phioenicia, 
and Persia. These may seem distant countries and 
forgotten people, and many might feel inclined to say, 
" Let the dead bury their dead ; what are those mum- 
mies to us } '' Still, such is the marvellous continuity 
of history, that I could easily show you many things 
which we, even we who are here assembled, owe to 
Babylon, to Nineveh, to Egypt, Phoenicia, and Persia. 

Every one who carries a watch, owes to the Baby- 
lonians the division of the hour into sixty minutes. 
It may be a very bad division, yet such as it. is, it has 
come to us from the Greeks and Romans, and it 
came to them from Babylon. The sexagesimal divi- 
sion is peculiarly Babylonian. Hipparchos, 150 B.C.. 
adopted it from Babylon, Ptolemy, 150 a.d., gave it 
wider currency, and the French, when they 'de 
cimated everything else, respected the dial plates 
of our watches, and left them with their sixty Baby 
Ionian minutes. 

Everyone who writes a letter, owes his alphabet to 
the Romans and Greeks ; the Greeks owed thili* alpha- 
bet to the Phoenicians, and the Phoenicians learnt it 
in Egypt. It may be a very imperfect alphabet — as 
all the students of phonetics will tell you ; yet, such 
as it is, and has been, we owe it to the old Phoenicians 



WHA T CAN INDIA TBA C^ VS9 2 7 

and Egyptians, and in every letter we trace, there lies 
imbedded the mummy of an ancient Egyptian hiero- 
glyphic. 

What do we owe to the Persians ? It does not seem 
to be much, for they were not a very inventive race, 
and what they knew, they had chiefly learnt from 
their neighbors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. 
Still, we owe them something. First of all, we owe 
them a large debt of gratitude for having allowed 
themselves to be beaten by the Greeks ; for think 
what the world would have been, if the Persians had 
beaten the Greeks at Marathon, and had enslaved, 
that means, annihilated, the genius of ancient Greece. 
However, this may be called rather an involuntary 
contribution to the progress of humanity, and I men- 
tion it only in order to show, how narrowly, not only 
Greeks and Romans, but Saxons and Anglo-Saxons 
too, escaped becoming Parsis or Fire-worshippers. 

But I can mention at least one voluntary gift which 
came to us from Persia, and that is the relation of 
silver to gold in our bi-metallic currency. That re- 
lation was, no doubt, first determined in Babylonia, 
but it assumed its practical and historical importance 
in the Persian empire, and spread from there to the 
Greek colonies in Asia, and thence to Europe, where 
it has maintained itself with slight variation to the 
present day. 

A talent* was divided into sixty mince, a mina into 
sixty shekels. Here we have again the Babylonian 
sexagesimal system, a system which owes its origin 



* See Cunningham, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1S81, 
pp. 162 — 168, 



2 3 U^^A T CAN INDIA TEA CU t/S f 

and popularity, I believe, to the fact that sixty has 
the greatest number of divisors. Shekel was trans- 
lated into Greek by Stater^ and an Athenian gold 
stater, like the Persian gold stater, down to the 
times of Croesus, Darius, and Alexander, was the 
sixtieth part of a mina of gold, not very far therefore 
from our sovereign. The proportion of silver to gold 
was fixed as 13 or 13^ to i ; and if the weight of a 
silver shekel was made as 13 to 10, such a coin 
would correspond very nearly to our florin.* Half a 
silver shekel was a drachma, and this was therefore 
the true ancestor of our shilling. 

Again you may say that any attempt at fixing the 
relative value of silver and gold is, and always has 
been, a great mistake. Still it shows how closely 
the world is held together, and how, for good or for 
evil, we are what we are, not so much by ourselves 
as by the toil and moil of those who came before us, 
our true intellectual ancestors, whatever the blood 
may have been composed of that ran through their 
veins, or the bones which formed the rafters of their 
skulls. 

And if it is true, with regard to religion, that no 
one could understand it and appreciate its full pur- 
port without knowing its origin and growth, that is 
without knowing something of what the cuneiform 
inscriptions of Mesopotamia, the hieroglyphic and 
hieratic texts of Egypt, and the historical monuments 
of Plioenicia and Persia can alone reveal to us, it is 
equally true, with regard to all the other elements 
that constitute the whole of our intellectual life. If 

* Sim^ the Persian word for silv«r, has also the meaning ©f one. 
thirteenth J Cunningham, i. c. p. 165. 



JVJ^A T CAN INDIA TEA CH USf 29 

we are Jewish or Semitic in our religion, we are 
Greek in our philosophy, /?^;«^;? in our politics, and 
Saxon in our morality, and it follows that a know- 
ledge of the history of the Greeks, Romans, and 
Saxons, or of the flow of civilization from Greece to 
Italy, and through Germany to these isles, forms an 
essential element in what is called a liberal, that is, 
an historical and rational education. 

But then it might be said. Let this be enough 
Let us know by all means, all that deserves to be 
known about our real spiritual ancestors in the great 
historical kingdoms of the world ; let us be grateful 
for all we have inherited from Egyptians, Babylonians, 
Phoenicians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, and Saxons. But 
why bring in India } Why add a new burden to 
what every man has to bear already, before he can 
call himself fairly educated .? What have we in- 
herited from the dark dwellers on the Indus and the 
Ganges, that we should have to add their royal names 
and dates and deeds to the archives of our already 
overburdened memory ? 

There is some justice in this complaint. The 
ancient inhabitants of India are not our intellectual 
ancestors in the same direct way as Jews, Greeks, 
Romans, and Saxons are ; but they represent, never- 
theless, a collateral branch of that family to which we 
belong by language, that is, by thought, and their 
historical records extend in some respects so far 
beyond all other records and have been preserved to 
us in such perfect and such legible documents, that 
we can learn from them lessons which we can learn 
nowhere else, and supply missing links in our intel- 
lectual ancestry far more important than that missing 



30 ^//-^ T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

link (which we can well afford to miss), the link 
between Ape and Man. * 

I am not speaking as yet of the literature of India 
as it is, but of something far more ancient, the 
language of India, or Sanskrit. No one supposes 
any longer that Sanskrit was the common source of 
Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon. This used to be 
said, but it has long been shown that Sanskrit is 
only a collateral branch of the same stem from which 
spring Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon ; and not only 
these, but all the Teutonic, all the Celtic, all the 
Slavonic languages, nay, the languages of Persia and 
Armenia also. 

What, then, is it that gives to Sanskrit its claim on 
our attention, and its supreme importance in the eyes 
of the historian ? 

First of all, its antiquity, — for we know Sanskrit at 
an earlier period than Greek. But what is far more 
important than its merely chronological antiquity is 
the antique state of preservation in which that Aryan 
language has been handed down to us. The world 
had known Latin and Greek for centuries, and it was 
felt, no doubt, that there was some kind of similarity 
between the two. But how was that similarity to be 
explained ? Sometimes Latin was supposed to give 
the key to the formation of a Greek word, sometimes 
Greek seemed to betray the secret of the origin of a 
Latin word. Afterwards, when the ancient Teutonic 
languages, such as Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, and the 
ancient Celtic and Slavonic languages too, came to be 
studied, no one could help seeing a certain family 
likeness among 'them all. But how such a likeness 
between these languages came to be, and how, what 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 1 31 

is far more difficult to explain, such striking differ- 
ences too between these languages came to be, 
remained a mystery, and gave rise to the most 
gratuitous theories, most of them, as you know, 
devoid of all scientific foundation. As soon, however, 
as Sanskrit stepped into the midst of these languages, 
there came light and warmth and mutual recognition. 
They all ceased to be strangers, and each fell of its 
own accord into its right place. Sanskrit was the 
eldest sister of them all, and could tell of many things 
which the other members of the family had quite 
forgotten. Still, the other languages too had each 
their own tale to tell ; and it is out of all their tales 
together that a chapter in the human mind has been 
put together which, in some respects, is more import- 
ant to us than any of the other chapters, the Jewish, 
the Greek, the Latin, or the wSaxon. 

The process by which that ancient chapter of his- 
tory was recovered is very simple. Take the words 
which occur in the same form and with the same 
meaning in all the seven branches of the Aryan family, 
and you have in them the most genuine and trust- 
worthy records in which to read the thoughts of our 
true ancestors, before they had become Hindus, or 
Persians, or Greeks, or Romans, or Celts, or Teutons, 
or Slaves. Of course, some of these ancient charters 
may have been lost in one or other of these seven 
branches of the Aryan family, but even then, if they 
are found in six, or five, or four, or three, or even two 
only of its original branches, the probability remains, 
unless we can prove a later historical contact between 
these languages, that these words existed before the 
great Aryan Separation, If we find ag7ii, meaning 



„ WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf 

fire, in Sanskrit, and ignis, meaning fire, in Latin, we 
may safely conclude that fire was known to the un- 
divided Aryans, even if no trace of the same name of 
fire occurred anywhere else. And why ? Because 
there is no indication that Latin remained longer 
united with Sanskrit than any of the other Aryan 
languages, or that Latin could have borrowed such a 
word from Sanskrit, after these two languages had 
once become distinct. We have, however, the Lithu- 
anian tignls, and the Scottish ingle, to show that the 
Slavonic and possibly the Teutonic languages also, 
knew the same word for fire, though they replaced it 
in time by other words. Words, like all other things, 
will die, and why they should live on in one soil and 
wither away and perish in another, is not always easy 
to say. What has become of ignis, for instance, in all 
the Romanic languages.? It has withered away and 
perished, probably because after losing its final un- 
accentuated syllable, it became awkward to pronounce ; 
and another word focus, which in Latin meant fire- 
place, hearth, altar, has taken its place. 

Suppose we wanted to know whether the ancient 
Aryans before their separation knew the mouse : we 
should only have to consult the principal Aryan dic- 
tionaries, and we should find in Sanskrit mush, in 
Greek ^t)?, in Latin mtis, in Old Slavonic myse, in Old 
High German m^is, enabling us to say that, at a time 
so distant from us that we feel inchned to measure it 
by Indian rather than by our own chronology, the 
mouse was known, that is, was named, was conceived 
and recognized as a species of its own, not to be con- 
founded with any other vermin. 

And if we were to ask whether the enemy of the 



WHAl" CAN lADIA TEACH US f 



Z2> 



mouse, the cat, was known at the same distant time, 
we should feel justified in saying decidedly, No. The 
cat is called in Sanskrit mar^ara and vi^ala. In Greek 
and Latin the words usually given as names of the 
cat, yaXei] and aiXovpo?^ mustella and feles, did not 
originally signify the tame cat, but the weasel or 
marten. The name for the real cat in Greek was 
Kar r a in 'La.tin cattis, and these words have supplied 
the names for cat in all the Teutonic, Slavonic, and 
Celtic languages. The animal itself, so far as we 
know at present, came to Europe from Egypt, where 
it had been worshipped for centuries and tamed ; and 
as this arrival probably dates from the fourth century 
A.D., we can well understand that no common name 
for it could have existed when the Aryan nations 
separated. 

In this way a more or less complete picture of the 
state of civilization, previous to the Aryan Separation, 
can be and has been reconstructed, like a mosaic put 
together with the fragments of ancient stones ; and I 
doubt whether, in tracing the history of the human 
mind, we shall ever reach to a lower stratum than 
that which is revealed to us by the converging rays of 
the different Aryan languages. 

Nor is that all ; for even that Proto-Aryan language, 
as it has been reconstructed from the ruins scattered 
about in India, Greece, Italy, and Germany, is clearly 
the result of a long, long process of thought. One 
shrinks from chronological limitations when looking 
into such distant periods of life. But if we find 
Sanskrit as a perfect literary language, totally differ- 
ent from Greek and Latin, 1500 B. c, where can those 



34 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 



streams of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin meet, as we 
trace them back to their common source ? And then, 
when we have followed these mighty national streams 
back to their common meeting point, even then that 
common language looks like a rock washed down and 
smoothed for ages by the ebb and flow of thought, 
We find in that language such a compound, for 
instance, as asini, I am, Greek fV/tz. What would 
other languages give for such a pure concept as / 
am ? They may say, I stand, or I live, or I grow, or 
I turn, but it is given to few languages only to be 
able to say I am. To us nothing seems more natural 
than the auxiliary verb / am : but, in reality, no work 
of art has required greater efforts than this little word 
/ am. And all those efforts lie beneath the level of 
the common Proto-Aryan speech. Many different 
ways were open, were tried, too, in order to arrive at 
such a compound as asmi, and such a concept as / 
a^n- But all were given up, and this one alone 
remained, and was preserved for ever in all the lan- 
guages and all the dialects of the Aryan family. In 
as-mi, as is the root, and in the compound as-mi, the 
predicative root as, to be, is predicated of mU I. But 
no language could ever produce at once so empty, or 
if you like, so general a root as as, to be. As meant 
originally to breathe, and from it we have asu, breath, 
spirit, life, also as the mouth, Latin ds, oris. By con- 
stant wear and tear this root^.f, to breathe, had first 
to lose all signs of its original material character 
before it could convey that purely abstract meaning 
of existence, without any quaUfication, which has 
rendered to the higher operations of thought the same 
service which the nought, likewise the invention of 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us 1 3^ 

Indian genius, has to render in arithmetic. Who will 
say how long the friction lasted which changed as, to 
breathe, into • as, to be ? And even a root as, to 
breathe, was an Aryan root, not Semitic, not Turan- 
ian. It possessed an historical individuality — it was 
the work of our forefathers, and represents a thread 
which unites us in our thoughts and words with 
those who first thought for us, with those who first 
spoke for us, and whose thoughts and words men are 
still thinking and speaking, though divided from them 
by thousands, it may be by hundreds of thousands of 
years. 

This is what I call history in the true sense of the 
word, something really worth knowing, far more so 
than the scandals of courts, or the butcheries of 
nations, which fill so many pages of our Manuals of 
History. And all this work is only beginning, and 
whoever likes to labor in these the most ancient of 
historical archives will find plenty of discoveries to 
make — and yet people ask, what is the use of learning 
Sanskrit ? 

We get accustomed to everything, and cease to 
wonder at what would have startled our fathers and 
upset all their stratified notions, like a sudden earth- 
quake. Every child now learns at school that English 
is an Aryan or Indo-European language, that it be- 
longs to the Teutonic branch, and that this branch, 
together with the Italic, Greek, Celtic, Slavonic, 
Iranic, and Indie branches, all spring from the same 
stock, and form together the great Aryan or Indo- 
European family of speech. 

But this, though it is taught now in our elementary 
schools, was really, but fifty years ago, like the open- 



36 IV^A T CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

ing of a new horizon of the world of the intellect, 
and the extension of a feeling of closest fraternity 
that made us feel at home where before we had been 
strangers, and changed millions of so-called barbarians 
into our own kith and kin. To speak the same 
language constitutes a closer union than to have 
drunk the same milk ; and Sanskrit, the ancient 
language of India, is substantially the same language 
as Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon. This is a lesson 
which we should never have learnt but from a study 
of Indian language and Hterature, and if India had 
taught us nothing else, it would have taught us more 
than almost any other language ever did. 

It is quite amusing, though instructive also, to 
read what was written by scholars and philosophers 
when this new light first dawned on the world. 
They would not have it, they would not believe that 
there could be any community of origin between the 
people of Athens and Rome, and the so-called Niggers 
of India. The classical scholars scouted the idea, and 
I myself still remember the time, when I was a 
student at Leipzig and began to study Sanskrit, with 
what contempt any remarks on Sanskrit or compara- 
tive grarnmiar were treated by my teachers, men such 
as Gottfried Hermann, Haupt, Westermann, Stall- 
baum, and others. No one ever was for a time so com- 
pletely laughed down as Professor Bopp, when he first 
pubhshed his Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, 
Zend, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. All hands were 
against him ; and if in comparing Greek and Latin 
with Sanskrit, Gothic, Celtic, Slavonic, or Persian, he 
happened to have placed one single accent wrong, 
the shouts of those who knew nothing but Greek 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US} ^h 

and Latin, and probably looked in their Greek Dic- 
tionaries to be quite sure of their accents, would 
never end. Dugald Stewart, rather than admit a 
relationship between Hindus and Scots, would rather 
believe t^at the whole Sanskrit language and the 
whole of Sanskrit literature — mind, a literature ex- 
tending over three thousand years and larger than 
the ancient literature of either Greece or Rome, — 
was a forgery of those wily , priests, the Brahmans. 
I remember too how, when I was at school at Leipzig, 
(and avery good school it was, with such masters as 
Nobbe, Forbiger, Funkhaenel, and Palm, — an old 
school too, which could boast of Leibniz among its 
former pupils) I remember, I say, one of our masters 
('Dr. Klee) telling us one afternoon, when it was too 
hot to do any serious work, that there was a language 
spoken in India, which was much the same as Greek 
and Latin, nay, as German and Russian. At first 
we thought it was a joke, but when one saw the 
parallel columns, of Numerals, Pronouns, and Verbs 
in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin written on the black 
board, one felt in the presence of facts, before which 
one had to bow. All one's ideas of Adam and Eve, 
and the Paradise, and the tower of Babel, and Shem, 
Ham, and Japhet, with Homer and ^neas and Viro-il 
too, seemed to be whirling round and round, till at 
last one picked up the fragments and tried to build 
up a new world, and to live with a new historical 
consciousness. 

Here you will see why I consider a certain knowledge 
of India an essential portion of a liberal or an historical 
education. The concept of the -European man has 
been changed and widely extended by our acquain- 



38 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US t 

tance with India, and we know now that we are 
something different from what we thought we were. 
Suppose the Americans, owing to some cataclysmal 
events, had forgotten their EngHsh origin, and after 
two or three thousand years found themselves in 
possession of a language and of ideas which they 
could trace back historically to a certain date, but 
which, at that date, seemed, as it were, fallen from 
the sky, without any explanation of their origin and 
previous growth, what would they say if suddenly the 
existence of an English language and literature were 
revealed to them, such as they existed in the eigh- 
teenth century— explaining all that seemed before 
almost miraculous, and solving almost every question 
that could be asked! Well, this is much the same as 
what the discovery of Sanskrit has done for us. It 
has added a new period to our historical consciousness, 
and revived the recollections of our childhood, which 
seemed to have vanished for ever. 

Whatever else we may have been, it is quite clear now 
that, many thousands of years ago, we were something 
that had not yet developed into an Englishman, or a 
Saxon, or a Greek, or a Hindu either, yet contained 
in itself the germs of all these characters. A strange 
being, you may say. Yes, but for all that a very real 
being, and an ancestor to of whom we must learn to 
be proud, far more than of any such modern ancestors, 
as Normans, Saxons, Celts, and all the rest. 

And this is not all yet that a study of Sanskrit and 
the other Aryan languages has done for us. It has 
not only widened our views of man, and taught us to 
embrace millions of strangers and barbarians as mem- 
bers of one family, but it has imparted to the whole 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US"^ 3^ 

ancient history of man a reality which it never pos- 
sessed before. 

We speak and write a great deal about antiquities, - 
and if we can lay hold of a Greek statue or an Egyptian 
Sphinx or a Babylonian Bull, our heart rejoices, and 
we build museums grander than any Royal palaces to 
receive the treasures of the past. This is quite right. 
But are you aware that every one of us possesses 
what may be called the richest and most wonderful 
Museum of Antiquities, older than any statues, sphin. 
xes, or bulls ? And where ? Why, in our own language. 
When I use such words 2i^ father or mother, heart or 
tear, one, two, three-, here and there, I am handling 
coins or counters that were current before there was 
one single Greek statue, one single Babylonian Bull, 
one single Egyptian Sphinx. Yes, each of us carries 
about with him the richest and most wonderful 
Museum of Antiquities ; and if he only knows how to 
treat those treasures, how to rub and polish them till 
they become translucent again, how to arrange them 
and read them, they will tell him marvels more 
marvellous than all hieroglyphics and cuneiform in- 
scriptions put together. The stories they have told 
us are beginning to be old stories now. Many of 
you have heard them before. But do not let them 
cease to be marvels, like so many things which cease 
to be marvels because they happen every day. And 
do not think that there is nothing left for you to do. 
There are more marvels still to be discovered in 
language than have ever been revealed to us ; nay, 
there is no word, however common, if only you know 
how to take it to pieces, like a cunningly contrived 
work of art, fitted together thousands of years ago by 



45 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ^ 

the most cunning of artists, the human mind, that 
will not make you listen and marvel more than any 
chapter of the Arabian Nights. 

But I must not allow myself to be carried away 
from my proper subject. All I wish to impress on 
you by way of introduction is that the results of the 
Science of Language, which, without the aid of San- 
skrit, would never have been obtained, form an essen- 
tial element of what we call a liberal, that is an his- 
torical education, — an education which will enable a 
man to do what the French call s' orient er, that is, " to 
find his East," " his true East," and thus to determine 
his real place in the world ; to know, in fact, the port 
whence man started, the course he has followed, and 
the port towards which he has to steer. 

We all come from the East — all that we value most 
has come to us from the East, and in going to the 
East, not only those who have received a special 
Oriental training, but everybody who has enjoyed the 
advantages of a liberal, that is, of a truly historical 
education, ought to feel that he is going to his " old 
home," full of memories, if only he can read them. 
Instead of feeling your hearts sink within you, when 
next year you approach the shores of India, I wish 
that every one of you could feel what Sir William 
Jones felt, when, just one hundred years ago, he came 
to the end of his long voyage from England, and saw 
the shores of India rising on the horizon. At that 
time young men going to the wonderland of India, 
were not ashamed of dreaming dreams, and seeing 
visions : and this was the dream dreamt and the vision 
seen by Sir William Jones, then simple Mr. Jones : — 

" When I was at sea last August (that is in August, 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ? 



41 



1783), on my voyage to this country (India), I had 
long and ardently desired to visit, I found one even- 
ing, on inspecting the observations of the day, that 
India lay before us, Persia on our left, whilst a breeze 
from Arabia blew nearly on our stern. A situation 
so pleasing in itself and to me so new, could not fail 
to awaken a train of reflections in a mind, which had 
early been accustomed to contemplate with delight 
the eventful histories and agreeable fictions of this 
Eastern world. It gave me inexpressible pleasure to 
find myself in the midst of so noble an amphitheatre, 
almost encircled by the vast regions of Asia, which 
has ever been esteemed the nurse of sciences, the in- 
ven tress of delightful and useful arts, the scene of 
glorious actions, fertile in the productions of human 
genius, and infinitely diversified in the forms of re- 
ligion and government, in the laws, manners, customs, 
and languages, as well as in the features and com- 
plexions of men. I could not help remarking how im- 
portant and extensive a field was yet unexplored, and 
how many solid advantages unimproved." 

India wants more such dreamers as that young 
Mr. Jones, standing alone on the deck of his vessel 
and watching the sun diving into the sea — with the 
memories of England behind and the hopes of India 
before him,, feeling the presence of Persia and its 
ancient monarchs, and breathing the breezes of Arabia 
and its glowing poetry. Such dreamers know how to 
make their dreams come true, and how to change 
their visions into realities. 

And as it was a hundred years ag«, so it is mow ; 
or at least, so it may be now. There are many bright 
dreams to be dreamt about India, and many bright 



42 'WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf 

deeds to be done in India, if only you will do them. 
Though many great and glorious conquests have been 
made in the history and literature of the East, since 
the days when Sir William Jones landed at Calcutta* 
depend upon it, no young Alexander here need despair 
because there are no kingdoms left for him to con- 
quer on the ancient shores of the Indus and the 
Ganges. 



®;rutf)fitl Cljaratter of tf)e ^inbu0* 



In my first Lecture I endeavored to remove the 
prejudice that everything in India is strange, and so 
different from the intellectual life which we are accus- 
tomed to in England that the twenty or twenty-five 
years which a Civil servant has to spend in the East 
seem often to him a kind of exile that he must bear 
as well as he can, but that severs him completely 
from all those higher pursuits by which life is made 
enjoyable at home. This need not be so and ought 
not to be so, if only it is clearly seen how almost 
every one of the higher interests that make life v/orth 
living here in England, may find as ample scope in 
India as in England. 

To-day I shall have to grapple with another pre- 
judice which is even more mischievous, because it 
forms a kind of icy barrier between the Hindus and 
their rulers, and makes anything like a feeling of true 
fellowship between the two, utterly impossible. 

That prejudice consists in looking upon our stay in 
India as a kind of moral exile, and in regarding the 
Hindus as an inferior race, totally different from our- 
selves in their moral character, and, more particularly 



44 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US1 

in what forms the very foundation of the English 
chiaracter, respect for truth. 

I believe there is nothing more disheartening to 
any high-minded young man than the idea that he 
will have to spend his life among human beings 
whom he can never respect or love— natives, as they 
are called, not to use even more offensive names — 
men whom he is taught to consider as not amenable 
to the recognised principles of self-respect, upright- 
ness, and veracity, and with whom therefore any com- 
munity of interests and action, much more any real 
friendshiiD, is supposed to be out of the question. 

So often has that charge of untruthfulness been 
repeated, and so generally is it now accepted, that it 
seems almost Quixotic to try to fight against it. 

Nor should I venture to fight this almost hopeless 
battle, if I were not convinced that such a charge, 
like all charges brought against a whole nation, rests 
on the most flimsy induction, and that it has done, 
is doing, and will continue to do more mischief than 
anything that even the bitterest enemy of English 
dominion in India could have invented. If a young 
man who goes to India as a Civil servant or as a 
military officer, goes there fully convinced that the 
people whom he is to meet with are all liars, liars 
by nature or by national instinct, never restrained 
in their dealings by any regard for truth, never to be 
trusted on their word, need we wonder at the feelings 
of disgust with which he thinks of the Hindus, even 
before he has seen them ; the feelings of distrust with 
which he approaches them, arid the contemptuous way, 
in which he treats them when brought intd contact 
with them f6r the transaction of public or private 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 45 

business ? When such tares have once been sown by 
the enemy, it will be difficult to gather them up. 
It has become almost an article of faith with every 
Indian Civil servant that all Indians are liars ; nay, 
I know I shall never be forgiven for my heresy in 
venturing to doubt it. 

Now, quite apart from India, I feel most strongly 
that every one of these international condemnations 
is to be deprecated, not only for the sake of the self- 
conceited and uncharitable state of mind from which 
they spring, and which they serve to strengthen and 
confirm, but for purely logical reasons also, namely 
for the reckless and slovenly character of the induc- 
tion on which such conclusions rest. Because a man 
has travelled in Greece and has been cheated by his 
dragoman, or been carried off by brigands, does it 
follow that all Greeks, ancient as well as modern, are 
cheats and robbers, or that they approve of cheating 
and robbery t And because in Calcutta, or Bombay, 
or Madras, Indians who are brought before Judges, 
or who hang about the law courts and the bazaars, 
are not distinguished by an unreasoning and uncom- 
promising love of truth, is it not a very vicious 
induction to say, in these days of careful reasoning* 
that all Hindus are liars — particularly if you bear in 
mind that, according to the latest census, the num- 
ber of inhabitants of that vast country amounts to 253 
millions. Are all these 253 millions of human beings 
to be set down as liars, because some hundreds, say 
even some thousands of Indians, when they are 
brought to an English court of law, on suspicion of 
having committed a theft or a murder, do not speak 
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ? 



4.6 WHAT CAN lA'BIA TEACH US\ 



Would an English sailor, if brought before a dark- 
skinned judge, who spoke English with a strange 
accent, bow down before him and confess at once 
any misdeed that he may have committed ; and 
would all his mates rush forward and eagerly bear 
witness against him, when he had got himself into 
trouble ? 

The rules of induction are general, but they depend 
on the subjects to which they are applied. We may, 
to follow an Indian proverb, judge of a whole field of 
rice by tasting one or two grains only, but if we 
apply this rule to human beings, we are sure to fall 
into the same mistake as the English chaplain who 
had once, on board an English vessel christened a 
French child, and who remained fully convinced for 
the rest of his life that all French babies had very 
long noses. 

I can hardly think of anything that you could 
safely predicate of all the inhabitants of India, and 
I confess to a little nervous tremor whenever I see a 
sentence beginning with " The people of India," or 
even with "All the Brahmans," or "All the Buddhists." 
What follows is almost invariably wrong. There is a 
greater difference between an Afghan, a Sikh, a Hin- 
dustani, a Bengalese, and a Dravidian than between 
an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German, and a Rus- 
sian — yet all are classed as Hindus, and all are 
supposed to fall under the same sweeping condem- 
nation. 

Let me read you what Sir John Malcolm says about 
the diversity of character to be observed by any one 
who has eyes to observe, among the different races 
whom we promiscuously call Hindus, and whom we 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 47 

promiscuously condemn as Hindus. After describing 
the people of Bengal as weak in body and timid in 
mind, and those below Calcutta as the lowest of our 
Hindu subjects, both in character and appearance, he 
continues : *' But from the moment you enter the dis- 
trict of Behar, the Hindu inhabitants are a race of 
men, generally speaking, not, more distinguished by 
their lofty stature and robust frame than they are for 
some of the finest qualities of the mind. They are 
brave, generous, humane, and their truth is as remark- 
able as their courage." 

But because I feel bound to protest against the 
indiscriminating abuse that has been heaped on the 
people of India from the Himalaya to Ceylon, do not 
suppose that it is my wish or intention to draw an 
ideal picture of India, leaving out all the dark shades, 
and giving you nothing but *' sweetness and light." 
Having never been in India myself, I can only claim 
for myself the right and duty of every historian, 
namely, the right of collecting as much information 
as possible, and the duty to sift it according to the 
recognized rules of historical qriticism. My chief 
sources of information with regard to the national 
character of the Indians in ancient times will be the 
works of Greek writers and the literature of the 
ancient Indians themselves. For later times we must 
depend on the statements of the various conquerors of 
India, who are not always the most lenient judges of 
those whom they may find it more difficult to rule 
than to conquer. For the last century to the present 
day, I shall have to appeal, partly to the authority of 
those who, after spending an active life in India and 
among the Indians, have given us the benefit of their 



4^ JVHAT CAN INDIA TEACH t/S f 

experience in published works, partly to the testi- 
mony of a number of distinguished Civil servants 
and of Indian gentlemen also, whose personal 
acquaintance I have enjoyed in England, in France, 
and in Germany. 

As I have chiefly to address myself to those who 
will themselves be the rulers and administrators of 
India in the future, allow me to begin with the 
opinions which some of the most eminent, and, I 
believe, the most judicious among the Indian Civil 
servants of the past have formed and deliberately 
expressed on the point which we are to-day discussing 
namely, the veracity or want of veracity among the 
Hindus. 

And here I must begin with a remark which has 
been made by others also, namely, that the Civil ser- 
vants who went to India in the beginning of this 
century, and under the auspices of the old East-India- 
Company, many of whom I had the honor and pleasure 
of knowing when I first came to England, seemed to 
have seen a great deal more of native life, native 
manners, and native character than those whom I had 
to examine five-and-twenty years ago, and who are 
now, after a distinguished career, coming back to 
England. India is no longer the distant island which 
it was, where each Crusoe had to make a home for 
himself as best he could. With the short and easy 
voyages from England to India and from India to 
England, with the frequent mails, and the telegrams, 
and the Anglo-Indian newspapers, official life in India 
has assumed the character of a temporary exile rather, 
which even English ladies are now more ready to 
share than fifty years ago. This is a difficulty which 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS, 49 

cannot be removed, but must be met, and which, I 
beUeve, can best be met by inspiring the new Civil 
servants with new and higher interests during their 
stay in India. 

I knew the late Professor Wilson, our Boden Pro- 
fessor of Sanskrit at Oxford, for many years, and 
often listened with deep interest to his Indian remini- 
scences. 

Let me read you what he. Professor Wilson, says 
of his native friends, associates, and servants : — * 

" I lived, both from necessity and choice, very much 
amongst the Hindus, and had opportunities of be- 
coming acquainted with them in a greater variety of 
situations than those in which they usually come 
under the observation of Europeans. In the Calcutta 
mint, for instance, I was in daily personal communi- 
cation with a numerous body of artificers, mechanics, 
and laborers, and always found amongst them cheerful 
and unwearied industry, good-humored compliance 
with the will of their superiors, and a readiness to 
make whatever exertions were demanded from them ; 
there was among them no drunkenness, no disorderly 
conduct, no insubordination. It would not be true to 
say that there was no dishonesty, but it was compara- 
tively rare, invariably petty, and much less formidable 
than, I believe, it is necessary to guard against in other 
mints in other countries. There was considerable 
skill and ready docility. So far from there being any 
servility, there was extreme frankness, and I should 
say that where there is confidence without fear, frank- 
ness is one of the most universal features in the Indian 
character. Let the people feel sure of the temper 

* Mill's History 01 British India, ed. Wilson, vol. i. p. 375. 



go WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

and good-will of their superiors, and there is an end 
of reserve and timidity, without the slightest departure 
from respect . . . ." 

Then, speaking of the much-abused Indian Pandits, 
he says : " The studies which engaged my leisure 
brought me into connection with the men of learning, 
and in them I found the similar merits of industry, 
intelligence, cheerfulness, frankness, with others 
peculiar to their avocation. A very common charac- 
teristic of these men, and of the Hindus especially, 
was- a simplicity truely childish, and a total unac- 
quaintance with the business and manners of life. 
Where that feature was lost, it was chiefly by those 
who had been long familiar with Europeans. Amongst 
the Pandits, or the learned Hindus, there prevailed 
great ignorance and great dread of the European 
character. There is, indeed, very little intercourse 
between any class of Europeans and Hindu scholars 
and it is not wonderful, therefore, that mutual mis- 
apprehension should prevail.' 

Speaking, lastly, of the higher classes in Calcutta 
and elsewhere, Professor Wilson says that he wit- 
nessed among them ' polished manners, clearness and 
comprehensiveness of understanding, liberality of 
feeling and independence of principle that would 
have stamped them gentlemen in any country in the 
world.' ' With some of this class,' he adds, ' I formed 
friendships which I trust to enjoy through life.' 

I have often heard Professor Wilson speak in the 
same, and in even stronger terms of his old friends 
in India, and his correspondence with Ram Comul 
Sen, the grandfather of Keshub Chunder Sen, a most 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 31 

orthodox, not to say bigoted, Hindu, which has lately, 
been published, shows on what intimate terms Eng- 
lishmen and Hindus may be, if only the advances are 
made on the English side. 

There is another Professor of Sanskrit, of whom 
your University may well- be proud, and who could 
speak on this subject with far greater authority than 
I can. He too will tell you, and I have no doubt has 
often told you, that if only you look out for friends 
among the Hindus, you will find them, and you may 
trust them. 

There is one book which for many years I have 
been in the habit of recommending, and another 
against which I have always been warning those of 
the candidates for the Indian Civil Service whom I 
happened to see at Oxford ; and I believe both the 
advice and the warning have in several cases borne 
the very best fruit. The book which I consider most 
mischievous, nay, which I hold responsible for some 
of the greatest misfortunes that have happened to 
India, is Mill's History of British India, even with 
the antidote against its poison, which is supplied by 
Professor Wilson's notes. The book which I recom- 
mend, and which I wish might be published again in 
a cheaper form, so as to make it more generally acces- 
sible, is Colonel Sleeman's Rambles and Recollec- 
tions of an Indian Official, published in 1844, but 
written originally in 1 835-1 836. 

Mill's History, no doubt, you all know, particularly 
the Candidates for the Indian Civil Service, who, I 
am sorry to say, are recommended to read it and are 
examined in it. Still, in order to substantiate my 



^2 . WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ^. 

Strong condemnation of the book, I shall have to give 
a few proofs : — 

Mill in his estimate of the Hindu character is chiefly 
guided by Dubois, a French missionary, and by Orme 
and Buchanan, Ten nan t, and Ward, all of them neither 
very competent nor very u-nprejudiced judges. Mill,* 
however, picks out all that is most unfavorable from 
their works, and omits the qualifications which even 
these writers felt bound to give to their wholesale 
condemnation of the Hindus. He quotes as serious, 
for instance, what was said in joke,t namely, that " a 
Brahman is an ant's nest of lies and impostures." 
Next to the charge of untruthfulness, Mill upbraids 
the Hindus for what he calls their litigiousness. He 
writes '.% "As often as courage fails them in seeking 
more daring gratification to their hatred and revenge* 
their malignity finds a vent in the channel of litiga- 
tion." Without imputing dishonorable motives, as 
Mill does, the same fact might be stated in a different 
way, by saying, " As often as their conscience and re- 
spect of law keep them from seeking more daring 
gratification to their hatred and revenge, say by murder 
or poisoning, their trust in English justice leads them 
to appeal to our Courts of Law." Dr. Robertson, in 
his " Historical Disquisitions concerning India," § 
seems to have considered the litigious subtlety of the 
Hindus as a sign of high civilization rather than of 
barbarism, but he is sharply corrected by Mr. Mill, 
who tells him that " nowhere is this subtlety carried 
higher than among the wildest of the Irish." That 
courts of justice, like the English, in which a verdict 

* Mill's History, ed. Wilson, vol. i, p. 368. 
t Mill's History, vol. i, p. 325. :j: L. c. vol. i, p. 329. § P. 217 



tkUTHFUL CHARACTER OP' THE HINDUS. 53 

was not to be obtained, as formerly in Mohammedan 
courts, by bribes and corruption, should at first have 
proved very attractive to the Hindus, need not surprise 
us. But is it really true that the Hindus are more 
fond of litigation than other nations ? If we consult 
Sir Thomas Munro, the eminent Governor of Madras, 
and the powerful advocate of the Ryotwar settlements, 
he tells us in so many words \^ '* I have had ample 
opportunity of observing the Hindus in every situation, 
and I can affirm, that they are not litigious." f 

But Mill goes further still, and in one place he 
actually assures his readers % that a " Brahman may 
put a man to death when he lists." In fact, he repre- 
sents the Hindus as such a monstrous mass of all 
vices that, as Colonel Vans Kennedy § remarked, 
society could not have held together, if it had really 
consisted of such reprobates only. Nor does he seem 
to see the full bearing of his remarks. Surely, if a 
Brahman might, as he says, put a man to death when- 
ever he lists, it would be the strongest testimony in 
their favor that you hardly ever hear of their availing 
themselves of such a privilege, to say nothiqg of the 
fact — and a fact it is — that, according to statistics, the 
number of capital sentences was one in every 10,000 
in England, but only one in every million in Bengal. || 

Colonel Sleeman's Rambles are less known than 
they deserve to be. To give you an idea of the man, 
I must read you some extracts from the book. 

* Mill's History, ed. Wilson, vol. i. p. 329. 

t Manu, VIII. 43, says : " Neither a King himself nor his officers 
must ever promote litigation; nor ever neglect a lawsuit instituted by 
others." % Mill's History, vol. i. p. 327. § L. c. p. 368. 

II See Elphinstone, History of India, ed. Cowell, p. 219 note. "Of 
the 232 sentences of death 64 only were carried out in England, while 
the 59 sentences of death in Bengal were all carried out." 



f CAN IxhiA TEACH USf 

His sketches being originally addressed to his sistef . 
this is how he writes to her :— 

'* My dear Sister, 

" Were anyone to ask your countrymen in India, 
what had been their greatest source of pleasure while 
there, perhaps, nine in ten would say, the letters 
which they receive from their sisters at home .... 
And while thus contributing so much to our happi- 
ness, they no doubt tend to make us better citizens 
of the world, and servants of government, than we 
should otherwise be ; for in our ' struggles through 
life ' in India, we have all, more or less, an eye to 
the approbation of those circles which our kind 
sisters represent, — who may therefore be considered 
in the exalted light of a valuable species of tmpaid 
magist7'acy to the government of India." 

There is a touch of the old English chivalry even 
in these few words addressed to a sister whose appro- 
bation he values, and with whom he hoped to spend 
the winter of his days. Having been, as he confesses, 
idle in answering letters, or rather," too busy to find 
time for long letters, he made use of his enforced 
leisure, while on his way from the Nerbuddah river 
to the Himmaleh mountains, in search of health, to 
give to his sister a full account of his impressions 
and experiences in India. Though what he wrote 
was intended at first "to interest and amuse his sister 
only and the other members of his family at home," 
he adds in a more serious tone : " Of one thing I 
must beg you to be assured, that I have nowhere in- 
dulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the recollec- 
tions, or the conversations. What I relate on the 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 55 

testimony of others, I believe to be true ; and what 
I relate on my own, you may rely upon as being 
so." 

When placing his volumes before the public at 
large in 1844, he expresses a hope that they may 
" tend to make the people of India better understood 
by those of our countrymen whose destinies are cast 
among them, and inspire more kindly feelings towards 
them." 

You may ask why I consider Colonel Sleeman so 
trustworthy an authority on the Indian character, 
more trustworthy, for instance, than ever so accurate 
and unprejudiced an observer as Professor Wilson, 
My answer is — because Wilson lived chiefly in Cal- 
cutta, while Colonel Sleeman saw India, where alone 
the true India can be seen, namely, in the village- 
communities. For many years he was employed as 
Commissioner for the suppression of 'Thuggee. The 
Thuggs were professional assassins, who committed 
their murders under a kind of religious sanction. 
They were originally " all Mohammedans, but for a 
long time past Mohammedans and Hindus had been 
indiscriminately associated in the gangs, the former 
class, however, still predominating." * 

In order to hunt up these gangs, Colonel Sleeman. 
had constantly to live among the people in the 
country, to gain their confidence, and to watch the 
good as well as the bad features in their character. * 

Now what Colonel Sleeman continually insists on 
is that no one knows the Indians who does not know 
them in their village-communities — -what we should 
now call their comimuies. It is that village-life which In 
India has given its peculiar impress to the Indian 

* Sir Ch, Trevelyan, Christianity and Hinduism, 1882. p. 42, 



2 5 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us i 

character, more so than in any other country we know. 
When in Indian history we hear so much of kings 
and emperors, of rdjahs and maharajahs, we are apt 
to think of India as an Eastern monarchy, ruled by a 
central power, and without any trace of that self- 
government which forms the pride of England. But 
those who have most carefully studied the political 
life of India tell you the very opposite. 

The political unit, or the social cell in India has 
always been, and, in spite of repeated foreign con- 
quests, is still the village-community. Some of these 
political units will occasionally combine, or be com- 
bined for common purposes (such a confederacy being 
called a grama^ala), but each is perfect in itself. When 
we read in the laws of Manu* of officers appointed to 
rule over ten, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand of 
these villages, that means no more than that they 
were responsible for the collection of taxes, and gene- 
rally for the good behavior of these villages. And 
when, in later times, we hear of circles of 84 villages, 
the so-called Chourasees (iTaturajitif), and of 360 
villages, this too seems to refer to fiscal arrangements 
only. To the ordinary Hindu, I mean to ninety-nine 
in every hundred, the village was his world, and the 
sphere of public opinion, with its beneficial influences 
on individuals, seldom extended beyond the horizon 
of his village. J 

* Manu VII. 115. 

t H. M. Elliot, Supplement to the Glossary of Indian Terms, p. 

X I see from Dr. Hunter's latest statistical tables that the whole 
number of towns and villages in British India amounts to 493,429. 
Out of this number 448,320 have less than 1000 inhabitants, and may 
be called villages. In Bengal, where the growth of towns has been 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 57 

Colonel Sleeman was one of the first who called 
attention to the existence of these village-communities 
in India, and their importance in the social fabric of 
the whole country both in ancient and in modern 
times ; and though they have since become far better 
known and celebrated through the writings of Sir 
Henry Maine, it is still both interesting and instruc- 
tive to read Colonel Sleeman's account. He writes 
as a mere observer, and uninfluenced as yet by any 
theories on the development of early social and politi- 
cal life among the Aryan nations in general. 

I do not mean to say that Colonel Sleeman was the 
first who pointed out the palpable fact that the whole 
of India is parcelled out into estates of villages. Even 
so early an observer as Megasthenes* seems to have 
been struck by the same fact when he says that " in 
India the husbandmen with their wives and children 
live in the country, and entirely avoid going into 
town." What Colonel Sleeman was the first to point 
out was that all the native virtues of the Hindus are 
intimately connected with their village-life. 

That village-life, however, is naturally the least 
known to English officials, nay, the very presence of 
an English official is often said to be sufficient to drive 
away those native virtues which distinguish both the 
private life and the public administration of justice 

most encouraged through Government establishments, the total num- 
ber of homesteads is 117,042, and more than half of these contain less 
than 200 inhabitants. Only 10,077 towns in Bengal have more than 
1000 inhabitants, that is, no more than about a seventeenth part of 
all the settlements are anything but what we should call substantia^ 
villages. In the North-Western Provinces the last census gives us 
105,124 villages, against 297 towns. See Times, 14th Aug., 1882. 

* Ancient India as described by Megasthene* and Arrian, by 
McCrindle, p. 42. 



5 8 WNA T CA N I A -I) /A -J 'EA CH US f 

and equity in an Indian village.* Take a man out of 
his village-community, and you remove him from all 
the restraints of society. He is out of his element, 
and, under temptation, is more likely to go wrong 
than to remain true to the traditions of his home-life- 
Even between village and village the usual restraints 
of public morality are not always recognized. What 
would be called theft or robbery at home, is called a 
successful raid or conquest if directed against distant 
villages ; and what would be falsehood or trickery in 
private life is honored by the name of policy and 
diplomacy if successful against strangers. On trie 
other hand, the rules of hospitality applied only to 
people of other villages, and a man of the same village 
could never claim the right of an Atithi, or guest.f 

Let us hear now what Colonel Sleeman tells us 
about the moral character of the members of these 
village-communities, and let us not forget that the 
Commissioner for the suppression of Thuggee had 
ample opportunities of seeing the dark as well as the 
bright ideas of the Indian character. 

He assures us that falsehood or lying between 
members of the same village is almost unknown. 
Speaking of some of the most savage tribes, the 
Gonds, for instance, he maintains that nothing would 



* " Perjury seems to be committed by the meanest and encouraged 
by some of the better sort among the Hindus and Mussuhnans, with 
as little remorse as if it were a proof of ingenuity, or even a merit." 
Sir W. Jones, Address to Grand Jury at Calcutta, in Mill's History 
of India, vol. i. p. 324. '' The longer we possess a province, the 
more common and grave does perjury become." Sir G. Cam.pbell^ 
quoted by S. Johnson, Oriental Religions, India, p. 288. 

t Vasish/ha, translated by Bahler, VIII. 8. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 59 

induce them to tell a lie, though they would think 
nothing of lifting a herd of cattle from a neighboring 
plain. 

Of these men it might perhaps be said that they have 
not yet learned the value of a lie ; yet even such 
blissful ignorance ought to count in a nation's charac- 
ter. But I am not pleading here for Gonds, or Bhils, 
or Santhals, and other non-Aryan tribes. I am speak- 
ing of the Aryan and more or less civilized inhabitants 
of India. Now amono* them, where ri2:hts, duties 
and interests begin to clash in one and the same 
village, public opinion, in its limited sphere, seems 
strong .enough to deter even an evil-disposed person 
from telling a falsehood. The fear of the gods also 
has not yet lost its power *. In most villages there 
is a sacred tree, a pipal-tree ( Ficus Indica), and the 
gods are supposed to delight to sit among its leaves, 

and listen to the music of their rustlinsf. The de- 
cs ( 

ponent takes one of these leaves in his hand, and 
invokes the god, who sits above him, to crush him, or 
those dear to him, as he crushes the leaf in his hand, 
if he speaks anything but the truth. He then plucks 
and crushes the leaf, and states what he has to 
say. 

The pipal-tree is generally supposed to be occupied 
by one of the Hindu deities, while the large cotton-tree, 
particularly among the wilder tribes, is supposed to be 
the abode of local gods, all the more terrible, because 
entrusted with the police of a small settlement only. 
In their punchdyets, Sleeman tells us, men adhere 
habitually and religiously to the truth, and " I have 
had before me hundreds of cases," he says, " in which 

* Sleeman, vol. ii. p. iii. 



6o WHA 7' CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

a man's property, liberty, and life has depended upon 
his telhno; a lie, and he has refused to tell it," 

Could many an English judge say the same ? 

In their own tribunals under the pipal-tree or cot- 
ton-tree, imagination commonly did what the deities, 
who were supposed to preside, had the credit of doing. 
If the deponent told a lie, he believed that the god 
who sat on his sylvan throne above him, and searched 
the heart of man, must know it ; and from, that 
moment he knew no rest, he was always in dread of 
his vengeance. If any accident happened to him, or 
to those dear to him, it was attributed to this offended 
deity ; and if no accident happened, some evil was 
brought about by his own disordered imagination. * 
It was an excellent superstition, inculcated in the 
ancient law-books, that the ancestors watched the an- 
swer of a witness, because, according as it was true or 
false they themselves would go to heaven or to hell, f 

Allow me to read you the abstract of a conversa- 
tion between an English official and a native law- 
officer as reported by Colonel Sleeman. The native 
lawyer was asked what he thought would be the effect 
of an act to dispense with oaths on the Koran and 
Ganges-water, and to substitute a solemn declaration 
made in the name of God, and under the same penal 
liabilities as if the Koran or Ganges-water had been 
in the deponent's hand. 

"' I have practised in the courts," the native said, 
" for thirty years, and during that time I have found 
only three kinds of witnesses — two of whom would, 
by such an act, be left precisely where they were, 
while the third would be released by it from a very 
salutary check." 

* Sleeraan, vel. ii. p. n6. Vasi3h/*/5« XVII. 32. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS, 6 1 

" And, pray, what are the three classes into which 
you divide the witnesses in our courts ? " 

" First, Sir, are those who will always tell the truth, 
whether they are required to state what they know in 
the form of an oath or not." 

'• Do you think this a large class ? " 

" Yes, I think it is ; and I have found among them 
many whom nothing on earth could make to swerve 
from the truth. Do what you please, you could 
never frighten or bribe them into a deliberate 
falsehood. 

" The second are those who will not hesitate to tell 
a lie when they have a motive for it, and are not re- 
strained by an oath. In taking an oath, they are 
afraid of two things, the anger of God, and the odium 
of men. 

" Only three days ago," he continued, " I required a 
power of attorney from a lady of rank, to enable me to 
act for her in a case pending before the court in 
this town. It was given to me by her brother, and 
two witnesses came to declare that she had given it. 
" Now," said I, " this lady is known to live under the 
curtain, and you will be asked by the judge whether 
you saw her give this paper : what will you say ? " 
They both replied — " If the judge asks us the question 
without an oath we will say " Yes " — it will save 
much trouble," and we know that she did give the 
paper, though we did not really see her give it ; but 
if he puts the Koran into our hands, we must say 
" iV^," for we should otherwise be pointed at by all 
the town as perjured wretches— our enemies would 
soon tell everybody that we had taken a false oath." 

" Now," the native lawyer went on, '' the form of an 
oath is a great check on this sort of persons. 



(32 WHAT CAN INJ:)IA TEACH USf 

" The third class consists of men who will tell lies 
whenever they have a sufficient motive, whether 
they have the Koran or Ganges-water in their hand 
or not Nothing will ever prevent their doing so ; 
and the declaration which you propose would be just 
as well as any other for them." 

" Which class do you consider the most numerous 
of the three ? " 

" I consider the second the most numerous^ and wish 
the oath to be retained for them.'' 

" That is, of all the men you see examined in our 
courts, you think the most come under the class of 
those who will, under the influence of strong motives, 
tell lies, if they have not the Koran or Ganges-water 
in their hands .-^ " ' 

''Yes." 

" But do not a great many of those whom you 
consider to be included among the second class come 
frorn the village-communities, — the peasantry of the 
country V 
''Yes." 

" And do you not think that the greatest part of 
those men who will tell lies in the court under the 
influence of strong motives, unless they have the 
Koran or Ganges-Vv^ater in their hands, would refuse 
to tell lies, if questioned before the people of their vil- 
liages, among the circle in which they live .'* " 

" Of course I do ; three-fourths of those who do 
not scruple to lie in the courts, would be ashamed to 
lie before their neighbors, or the elders of their vil- 
lage." 

" You think that the people of the village-commu- 
nities are more ashamed to tell lies before their 
neighbors than the people of towns ? '' 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS, 63 

" Much more — there is no comparison." 

" And the people of towns and cities bear in India 
Dut a small proportion to the people of the village- 
communities ? " 

" I should think a very small proportion indeed." 

" Then you think that in the mass of the population 
of India, out of our courts, the first class, or those who 
speak truth, whether they have the Koran or Ganges- 
water in their hands or not, would be found more 
numerous than the other two } " 

" Certainly I do ; if they were always to be ques- 
tioned before their neighbors or elders, so that they 
could feel that their neighbors and elders could know 
what they say." 

It was from a simple sense of justice that I felt 
bound to quote this testimony of Colonel Sleeman as 
to the truthful character of the natives of India, when 
left to themselves. My interest lies altogether with 
the people of India, when left to themselves^ and his- 
torically I should like to draw a line after the year 
one thousand after Christ. When you read the 
atrocities committed by the Mohammedan conquerors 
of India from that time to the time when England 
stepped in and, whatever may be said by her envious 
critics, made, at all events, the broad principles of our 
common humanity respected once more in India, the 
wonder, to my mind, is how any nation could have 
survived such an Inferno without being turned into 
devils- themselves. 

Now, it is quite true that during the two thousand 
years which precede the time of Mahmud of Gazni, 
India has had but few foreign visitors, and few foreign 
critics ; still it is surely extremely strange that when- 



64 ■ WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US J 

€ver, either in Greek, or in Chinese, or in Persian, or 
in Arab writings, we meet with any attempts at des- 
cribing the distinguishing features in the national 
character of the Indians, regard for truth and justice 
should always be mentioned first. 

Ktesias, the famous Greek physician of Artaxerxes 
Mnemon (present at the battle of Cunaxa, 404 b. c), 
the first Greek writer who tells us anything about 
the character of the Indians, such as he heard it des- 
cribed at the Persian court, has a special chapter * On 
the justice of the Indians.'* 

Megasthenes,^ the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator 
at the court of Sandrocottus in Palibothra (Pa/aliputra, 
the modern Patna), states that thefts were extremely 
rare, and that they honored truth and virtue. $ 

Arrian (in the second century, the pupil of Epic- 
tetus) when speaking of the public overseers or super- 
intendents in India, says : § " They oversee what goes 
on in the country or towns, anH report everything to 
the king, where the people have a king, and to the 
magistrates, where the people are self-governed, and 
it is against use and wont for these to give in a false 
report ; but indeed no Indian is accused of lying. || 

The Chinese, who come next in order of time, bear 
the same, I believe, unanimous testimony in favor of 
the honesty and veracity of the Hindus. Let me 
quote Hiouen-thsang, the most famous of the Chinese 
Buddhist pilgrims, who visited India in the seventh 

*Ktesiae Fragmenta (ed. Didot), p. 8i. 

t See Indian Antiquary, 1876, p. 333. 

X Megasthenis Fragmenta (ed. Didot) in Fragm. Histor. Grace, vol. 
ii. p. 426 b : ^AXiipBidiv te o/ioiaoi Hal apEzr/v ditodaxovTca, 
§ Indica, cap. xii. 6. 
y See McCrindle in Indian Antiquary, 1876, p. 92, 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OP THE HUN BUS. 55 

century^. " Though the Indians," he writes, " are of 
a light temperament, they are distinguished by the 
straightforwardness and honesty of their character. 
With regard to riches, they never take anything un- 
justly ; with regard to justice, they make even excessive 
concessions .... Straightforwardness is the dis- 
tinguishing feature of their administration." 

If we turn to the accounts given by the Mohamme- 
dan conquerors of India, we find Idrisi, in his Geo- 
graphy (written in the nth century), summing up 
their opinion of the Indians in the following words if 

" The Indians are naturally inclined to justice, and 
never depart from it in their actions. The good faith, 
honesty, and fidelity to their engagements are well 
known, and they are so famous for these qualities that 
people flock to their country from every side." 

In the thirteenth century we have the testimony of 
Marco Polo, J who thus speaks of the Abraiamajt, a 
name by which he seems to mean the Brahmans who, 
though not traders by profession, might well have 
been employed for great commercial transactions by 
the king. This was particularly the case during the 
times which the Brahmans would call times of distress, 
when many things were allowed which at other times 
were forbidden by the laws. "You must know," 
Marco Polo says, " that these Abraiaman are the best 
merchants in the world, and the most truthful, for 
they would not tell a lie for anything on earth." 

In the fourteenth century we have Friar Jordanus, 
who goes out of his way to tell us that the people of 

* Vol. ii. p. 83. t Elliot, History of India, vol. i. p. 8S. 

X Marco Polo, ed. H. Yule, vol. ii. p. 350. 



66 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US} 

Lesser India (South and Western India), are true in 
speech and eminent in justice.* 

In the fifteenth century Kamal-eddin Abd-errazak 
Samarkandi (141 3-1482), who went as ambassador of 
the Khakan to the prince of Kalikut and to the King 
of Vidyanagara (about 1440-1445), bears testimony to 
the perfect security which merchants enjoy in that 
country.f 

In the sixteenth century, Abu Fazl, the minister of 
the Emperor Akbar, says in his Ayin Akbari : '* The 
Hindus are rehgious, affable, cheerful, lovers of just- 
ice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of 
truth, grateful and of unbounded fidelity ; and their 
soldiers know not what it is to fly from the field of 
battle.' ■$ 

And even in quite modern times Mohammedans 
seem willing to admit that the Hindus, at all events in 
their dealings with Hindus, are more staightforward 
than Mohammedans in their dealings with Moham- 
medans. 

Thus Meer Sulamut Ali, a venerable old Mussulman, 
and, as Colonel Sleeman says, a most valuable public 
servant, was obliged to admit that " a Hindu may feel 
himself authorised to take in a Mussulman, and might 
even think it meritorious to do so ; but he would never 
think it meritorious to take in one of his own religion. 
There are no less than seventy-two sects of Moham- 
mendans ; and every one of these sects would not only 
take in the followers of every other religion on earth, 

* Marco Polo, ed. H, Yule, Vol ii. 

t Notices des Manuscrits, torn. xiv. p. 436. He seems to have 
been one of the first to state that the Persian text of the Kalilah and 
Dimna was derived from the wise people of India. 

X Samuel Johnson, India, p, 294, 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. Qy 

but every member of every one of the other seventy- 
one sects ; and the nearer that sect is to his own^ the 
greater the merit of taking in its members." * 

So I could go on quoting from book after book, and 
again and again we should see how it was love of truth 
that struck all the people who came in contact with 
India, as the prominent feature in the national character 
of its inhabitants. No one ever accused them of false- 
hood. There must surely be some ground for this, for 
it is not a remark that is frequently made by travellers 
in foreign countries, even in our time, that their in- 
habitants invariably speak the truth. Read the ac- 
counts of English travellers in France, and you will 
find very little said about French honesty and veracity, 
while French accounts of England are seldom without 
a fling at Perfide Albion! 

But if all this is true, how is it, you may well ask, 
that public opinion in England is so decidedly un- 
friendly to the people of India ; at the utmost tolerates 
and patronizes them, but v/ill never trust them, never 
treat them on terms of equality .-^ 

I have already hinted at some of the reasons. Public 
opinion with regard to India is made up in England 
chiefly by those who have spent their lives in Calcutta, 
Bombay, Madras, or some other of the principal towns 
in India. The native element in such towns contains 
mostly the most unfavorable specimens of the Indian 
population. An insight into the domestic life of the 
more respectable classes, even in towns, is difficult 
to obtain ; and, when it is obtained, it is extremely 
difficult. to judge of their manners according to our 
standard of what is proper, respectable, or gentleman- 

* Sleeman, Rambles, vol. i. p, d-^, ^ 



68 ^VI/A r CAN INDIA TEA CII US f 

like. The misunderstandings are frequent and often 
most grotesque; and such, we must confess, is human 
nature, that when we hear the different and often most 
conflicting accounts of the character of the Hindus, we 
are naturally sceptical with regard to unsuspected 
virtues among them, while we are quite disposed to ac- 
cept unfavorable accounts of their character. 

Lest I should seem to be pleading too much on 
the native side of the question and to exaggerate 
the difficulty of forming a correct estimate of the 
character of the Hindus, let me appeal to one of the 
most distinguished, learned, and judicious members 
of the Indian Civil Service, the author of the History 
of India, Mountstuart Elphinstone. " Englishmen in 
India*," he says, " have less opportunity than might be 
expected of forming opinions of the native character. 
Even in England, few know much of the people 
beyond their own class, and what they do know, they 
learn from newspapers and publications of a descrip- 
tion which does not exist in India. In that country 
also, religion and manners put bars to our intimacy 
with the natives, and limit the number of transactions 
as well as the free communication of opinions. We 
know nothing of the interior of families but by report, 
and have no share in those numerous occurrences of 
life in which the amiable parts of character are most 
exhibited." "Missionaries- of a different religion, 
judges, police-magistrates, officers of revenue or cus- 
toms, and even diplomatists, do not see the most vir- 
tuous portion of a nation, nor any portion, unless when 
influenced by passion, or occupied by some personal 
interest. What we do see we judge by our own 

* Elphinstone's History of India, ed. Cowell, p. 213, 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HIAWUS. 69 

Standard. We conclude that a man who cries like a 
child on slight occasions, must always be incapable of 
acting or suffering with dignity ; and that one who 
allows himself to be called a liar would not be 
ashamed of any baseness. Our writers also confound 
the distinctions of time and place ; they combine in 
one character the Maratta and the Bengalese ; and 
tax the present generation with the crimes of the 
heroes of the Mahabharata. It might be argued, in 
opposition to many unfavorable testimonies, that 
those who have known the Indians longest have 
always the best opinion of them ; but this is rather a 
compliment to human nature than to them, since it is 
true of every other people. It is more in point, that 
all persons who have retired from India think better 
of the people they have left, after comparing them 
with others, even of the most justly admired nations." 

But what is still more extraordinary than the 
ready acceptance of judgments unfavorable to the 
character of the Hindus, is the determined way in 
which public opinion, swayed by the statements of 
certain unfavorable critics, has persistently ignored 
the evidence which members of the Civil Service, 
officers and statesmen— men of the highest authority 
— have given again and again, in direct opposition to 
these unfavorable opinions. Here, too, I must ask to 
be allowed to quote at least a few of these witnesses 
on the other side. 

Warren Hastings thus speaks of the Hindus in 
general : '' They are gentle and benevolent, more sus- 
ceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them, and 
less prompted to vengeance for wrongs inflicted than 



^o WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us f 

any people on the face of the earth ; faithful, affec- 
tionate, submissive to legal authority." 

Bishop Heber said : *' The Hindus are brave> 
courteous, intelligent, most eager for knowledge and 
improvement ; sober, industrious, dutiful to parents, 
affectionate to their children, uniformly gentle and 
patient, and more easily affected by kindness and 
attention to their wants and feelings than any people 
I ever met with/'* 

Elphin stone states : " No set of people among the 
Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our own great 
towns. The villagers are everywhere amiable, affec- 
tionate to their families, kind to their neighbors, and 
towards all but the government honest and sincere. 
Including the Thugs and Dacoits, the mass of crime 
is less in India than in England. The Thugs are 
almost a separate nation, and the Dacoits are desperate 
ruffians in gangs. The Hindus are mild and gentle 
people, more merciful to prisoners than any other 
Asiatics. Their freedom from gross debauchery is the 
point in which they appear to most advantage ; and 
their superiority in purity of manners is not flattering 
to our self-esteem. t" 

Yet Elphinstone can be most severe on the real 
faults of the people of India. He states that, at pre- 
sent, want of veracity is one of their prominent vices, 
but he addsj " that such deceit is most common in 
people connected with government, a class which 
spreads far in India, as, from the nature of the land- 
revenue, the lowest villager is often obliged to resist 
force by fraud. § 

* Samuel Johnson, 1. c. p. 293. 
t See History of India, pp. 375-381. 
X L. c. p. 215, § L. c. p. 218, 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. yi 

Sir John Malcolm writes '^ *' I have hardly ever 
known where a person did understand the language, 
or where a calm communication was made to a native 
of India, through a well-informed and trustworthy- 
medium, that the result did not prove, that what had 
at first been stated as falsehood, had either proceeded 
from fear, or from misapprehension. I by no means 
wish to state that our Indian subjects are more free 
from this vice than other nations that occupy a nearly 
equal positi-on in society, but I am positive that they 
are not more addicted to untruth." 

Sir Thomas Munro bears even stronger testimony. 
He writes :t " If a good S3^stem of agriculture, unri- 
valled manufacturing skill, a capacity ta produce what- 
ever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, 
schools established in every village for teaching read- 
ing, writing, and arithmetic,^ the general practice of 
hospitality and charity amongst each other, and above 
all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, 
respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which de- 

* Mill's History of India, ed. Wilson, vol. i. p. 370. 

t Mill's History, vol. i. p. 371. 

\ Sir Thomas Munro estimated the children educated at public 
schools in the Madras presidency as less than one in three. But low 
as it was, it was, as he justly remarked, a higher rate than existed till 
very lately in most countries of Europe. Elphinstone, Hist, of India, 
p. 205. 

In Bengal there existed no less than 80,000 native schools, though, 
doubtless, for the most part, of a poor quality. According to a Gov- 
ernment Report of 1835, there was a village school for every 400 per- 
sons. Missionary Intelligencer, IX. 183-193. ^. 

Ludlow (British India, I. 62) writes: "In every Hindu village which 
has retained its old form I am assured tbat the children generally are 
able to read, write, and cipher; but where we have swept away the 
village system, as in Bengal, there the vilJage school has also dis- 
appeared. .., . - 



^2 tVHAT CAN- INDIA TEACH U^f 

note a civilized people — then the Hindus are not in. 
ferior to the nations of Europe, and if civilization is to 
become an article of trade between England and India, 
I am convinced that England will gain by the import 



careo." 



My own experience with regard to the native 
character has been, of course, very limited. Those 
Hindus whom I have had the pleasure to know per 
sonally in Europe may be looked upon as exceptional, 
as the best specimens, it may be, that India could 
produce. Also, my intercourse with them has natu- 
rally been such that it could hardly have brought 
out the darker sides of human nature. During the 
last twenty years, however, I have had some ex- 
cellent opportunities of watching a number of native 
scholars under circumstances where it is not difficult 
to detect a man's true character, I mean in literary 
work and, more particularly, in literary controversy. I 
have watched them carrying on such controversies 
both among themselves and with certain European 
scholars, and I feel bound to say that, with hardly one 
exception, they have displayed a far greater respect 
for truth, and a far more manly and generous spirit 
than we are accustomed to even in Europe and 
America. They have shown strength, but no rude- 
ness ; nay I know that nothing has surprised them 
so much as the coarse invective to which certain San- 
skrit scholars have condescended, rudeness of speech 
being, according to their view of human nature, a 
safe sign not only of bad breeding, but of want of 
knowledge. When they were wrong, they have readily 
admitted their mistakes ; when they were right, they 
have never sneered at their European adversaries. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 73 

There has been, with few exceptions, no quibbling, no 
special pleading, no untruthfulness on their part, and 
certainly none of that low ^cunning of the scholar who 
writes down and publishes what he knows perfectly 
well to be false, and snaps his fingers at those who 
still value truth and self-respect more highly than 
victory or applause at any price. Here, too, we might 
possibly gain by the import cargo. 

Let me add that I have been repeatedly told by 
English merchants that commercial honor stands 
higher in India than in any other country, and that 
a dishonored bill is hardly known there. 

I have left to the last the witnesses who might 
otherwise have been suspected — I mean the Hindus 
themselves. The whole of their literature from one 
end to the other is pervaded by expressions of love 
and reverence for truth. Their very word for truth 
is full of meaning. It is s a t or s a t y a, sat being the 
participle of the verb as, to be. True, therefore, 
was with them simply that which is. The English 
sooth is connected with sat, also the Greek 6V for Eaov., 
and the Latin seits, in prcesens. 

We are all very apt to consider truth to be what 
is trowed by others, or believed in by large majorities. 
That kind of truth is easy to accept. But whoever 
has once stood alone, surrounded by noisy assertions, 
and overwhelmed by the clamor of those who ought 
to know better, or perhaps who did know better — call 
him Galileo or Darwin, Colenso or Stanley, or any 
other name — he knows what a real delight it is to 
feel in his heart of hearts, this is true — this is — this 
is s a t — whatever daily, weekly, or quarterly papers, 



74 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

whatever bishops, archbishops, or popes, may say to 
the contrary. 

Another name for truth is the Sanskrit r/ta, which 
originally seems to have meant straight, direct, while 
a.nrit3. is untrue, false. 

" Now one of the highest praises bestowed upon the 
gods in the Veda is that they are s a t y a, true, truthful, 
trustworthy ; * and it is well known that both in 
modern and ancient times, men always ascribe to God 
or to their gods those qualities which they value 
most in themselves. 

Other words applied to the gods as truthful beings, 
are a d r o g h a, lit. not deceiving.! A d r o g h a-v a /§ 
means, he whose word is never broken. Thus Indra, the 
Vedic Jupiter, is said to have been praised by the 
fathers J "as reaching -the enemy, overcoming him, 
standing on the summit, true of speech, most powerful 
in thought." 

Droghava>^,§ on the contrary, is used for deceit- 
ful men. Thus Vasish^ha, one of the great Vedic poets, 
says : " If I had worshipped false gods, or if I believed 
in the gods vainl)' — but why art' thou angry with us, 
O 6"atavedas } May liars go to destruction ! " 

Satyam, as a neuter, is often used as an abstract, 
and is then rightly translated by truth. But it also 
means that which is, the true, the real ; and there are 
several passages in the Rig-veda where, instead of 
truth, I think we ought simply to translate satyam by 
the true, that is, the real, ro ovrcD? ov. It sounds, no 
doubt, very well to translate Satyena uttabhita bhlimi/^, 

* Rig-veda I. 87, 4 ; I45» 5 ; ^74> i ; V. 23, 2. 

t Rig-veda III. 32, 9; VI. 5, i. 

I Rig-veda VI 22, 2. § Rig-veda III. 14, 6, 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 75 

by " the earth is founded on truth ; " and I believe 
every translator has taken satya in that sense here. 
Ludwig translates, " Von der Wahrheit ist die Erde 
gestiitzt." But such an idea, if it conveys any tangible 
meaning at all, is far too abstract for those early poets 
and philosophers. They meant to say " the earth, 
such as we see it, is held up, that is, rests on some- 
thing real, though we may not see it, on something 
which they called the Real,* and to which, in course 
of time, they gave many more names, such 2iS R it a, 
the right. Brahman, etc. 

Of course where there is that strong reveience for 
truth, there must also be the sense of guilt arising 
from untruth. And thus we hear one poet pray that 
the waters may wash him clean, and carry off all his 
sins and all untruth : 

" Carry away, ye waters,f whatever evil there is in 
me, wherever I may have deceived, or may have cursed, 
and also all untruth (an/'rtam)."J 

Or again, in the Atharva-veda IV. 16 : 

" May all thy fatal snares, which stand spread out 
seven by seven and threefold, catch the man who tells 
a lie, may they pass by him who tells the truth ! " 

From the Brahma/^as, or theological treatises of the 
Brahmans, I shall quote a few passages only : 

* Sometimes they trace even tliis Satya or Riiz, the Real or Right^ 
to a still higher cause, and say (Rig-veda X. 190, i ) : 

" The Right and Real was born from the Lighted Heat ; from 
thence was born Night, and thence the billowy sea. From the sea 
was born Sa:^zvatsara, the year, he who ordereth day and night, the 
Lord of all that moves (winks). The Maker (dhatrz) shaped Sun 
and Moon in order ; he shaped the sky, the earth, the welkin, and the 
highest heaven." t Rig-veda L 23, 22. 

t Or it may mean, "Wherever I may have deceived, or sworn false." 



y6 WHAT CAN- INDIA TEACH US f 

" Whosoever* speaks the truth, makes the fire on 
his own altar blaze up, as if he poured butter into the 
lighted fire. His own light grows larger, and from 
to-morrow to to-morrow he becomes better. But 
whosoever speaks untruth, he quenches the fire on 
his altar, as if he poured water into the lighted fire ; 
his own light grows smaller and smaller, and from to- 
morrow to to-morrow he becomes more wicked. Let 
man therefore speak truth only. 

And again :% " A man becomes impure by uttering 
falsehood." 

And again : § " As a man who steps on the edge of 
a sword placed over a pit cries out, I shall slip, I shall 
slip into the pit, so let a man guard himself from 
falsehood (or sin). " 

In later times we see the respect for truth carried 
to such an extreme, that even a promise, unwittingly 
made, is considered to be bindins:. 

In the Ka^'/^a-Upanishad, for instance, a father is 
introduced offering what is called an ^//-sacrifice, 
where everything is supposed to be given up. His 
son, who is standing by, taunts his father with not 
having altogether fulfilled his vow, because he has 
not sacrificed his son. Upon this, the father, though 
angry and against his v/ill, is obliged to sacrifice his 
son. Again, when the son arrives in the lower world, 
he is allowed by the Judge of the Dead to ask for 
three favors. He -then asks to be restored to life, 
to be taught some sacrificial mysteries, and, as the 
third boon, he asks to know what becomes of man 

* ^atapatha BrS,hma«a II. 2, ^, 19. 

t Cf. Muir, Metrical Translations, p. 268. 

t S3.t. Br. III. I, 2, 10. § Taitt. Ara«yaka X. 9. 



fkVTHFUL CBARACTEk OF THE lilNDUS. >jj 

after he is dead. Yama, the lord of the Departed, 
tries in vain to be let off from answering this last 
question. But he, too, is bound by his promise, and 
then follows a discourse on life after death, or immortal 
life which forms one of the most beautiful chapters in 
the ancient literature of India. 

The whole plot of one of the great Epic poems, 
the Ramaya/^a, rests on a rash promise given by 
Dai-aratha, king of Ayodhya, to his second wife, 
Kaikeyi, that he would grant her two boons. In 
order to secure the succession to her own son, she 
asks that Rama, the eldest son by the king's other 
wife, should be banished for fourteen years. Much 
as the king repents his promise, Rama, his eldest son, 
would on no account let his father break his word, 
and he leaves his kingdom to wander in the forest 
with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshma/^a. After 
the father's death, the son of the second wife declines 
the throne, and comes to Rama to persuade him to 
accept the kingdom of his father. But all in vain. 
Rama will keep his exile for fourteen years, and never 
disown his father's promise. Here follows a curious 
dialogue between a Brahman Gahali and Prince Rama, 
of which I shall give some extracts :* 

''The Brdhman, who is a priest and courtier, says, 
" Well, descendant of Raghu, do not thou, so noble 
in sentiments, and austere in character, entertain 
like a common man, this useless thought. What man 
is a kinsman of any other.'' What relationship has 
anyone with another ? A man is born alone and 
dies alone. Hence he who is attached to anyone as 
his father or his mother, is to be regarded as if he 

X Muir, Metrical Translations, p. 218. 



78 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

were insane, for no one belongs to another. Thoii 
oughtest not to abandon thy father's kingdom and 
stay here in a sad and miserable abode, attended 
with many trials. Let thyself be inaugurated king 
in the wealthy Ayodhya. Daj-aratha, thy father is 
nothing to thee, or thou to him ; the king is one 
and thou another,- do therefore what is said . . . Then 
offer oblations to the departed spirits (of thy fore- 
fathers) on prescribed days ; but see what a waste 
of food ! For what can a dead man eat } If what is 
eaten by one here enters into the body of another 
(viz., of the departed), let 5raddhas be offered to 
those who are travelling ; they need not then get 
food to eat on their journey. These books (the, 
Vedas), (which enjoin men to) sacrifice, give, con- 
secrate themselves, practise austerities, and forsake 
the world, are composed by clever men to induce 
others to bestow gifts. Authoritative words do not 
fall from heaven. Let me, and others like yourselves, 
embrace whatever assertion is supported by reason. 
Adhere to what is apparent to the senses, and reject 
what is invisible. . . . This world is the next world ; 
do thou therefore enjoy pleasure, for every virtuous 
man does not gain it. Virtuous men are greatly dis- 
tressed, while the unrighteous are seen to be happy.'" 

These positivist sentiments sound strange, particu- 
larly from the mouth of a Brahman. But the poet 
evidently wishes to represent a Brahman living at court, 
who has an argument ready for anything and every- 
thing that is likely to please his king. 

But what does Rama answer } " The words," he 
says, " which you have addressed to me, though they 
recommend what seefns to be right and salutary, advise, 



r'RUTHFUL CHARACTEk OP THE mNDtJS. ifg 

in fact, the contrary. The sinful transgressor, who 
lives according to the rules of heretical systems, obtains 
no esteem from good men. It is good conduct that 
marks a man to be noble or ignoble, heroic or a pre- 
tender to manliness, pure or impure. Truth and mercy 
are immemorial characteristics of a king's conduct. 
Hence royal rule is in its essence truth. On truth the 
world is based. Both sages and gods have esteemed 
truth. The man who speaks truth in this world attains 
the highest imperishable state. Men shrink with fear 
and horror from a liar as from a serpent. In this world 
the chief element in virture is truth ; it is called the 
basis of everything. \ Truth is lord in the world ; virtue 
always rests on truth. All things are founded on truth 
nothing is higher than it. ^ Why, then, should I not 
be true to my promise and faithfully observe the truth; 
ful injunction given by my father.? Neither through 
covetousness, nor delusion, nor ignorance, will I, over- 
powered by darkness, break through the barrier of 
truth, but remain true to my promise to my father. 
How shall I, having promised to him that I would thus 
reside in the forest, transgress his injunction, and do 
what Bharata recommends } " 

The other epic poem too, the Mahabharata, is full of 
episodes showing a profound regard for truth and an 
almost lavish submission to a pledge once given. The 
death of Bhishma, one of the most important events 
in the story of the Mahabharata, is due to his vow 
never to hurt a woman. He is thus killed by Sik- 
handin, whom he takes to be a woman.^ 

Were I to quote from all the law-books, and from 

♦ Holtzmann Das alte indische Epos, p 21, note 83^ 



8o ^//-^ T CAN 1Mb I A TEA cM t/S ? 

still later works, everywhere you would hear the same 
keynote of truthfulness vibrating through them all. 

We must not, however, suppress the fact that, under 
certain circumstances, a lie was allowed, or, at all 
events, excused by Indian lawgivers. Thus Gautama 
says : * " An untruth spoken by people under the in- 
fluence of anger, excessive joy, fear, pain, or grief, by 
infants, by very old men, by persons laboring under a 
delusion, being under the influence of drink, or by mad 
men, does not cause the speaker to fall, or as we should 
say, is a venial, not a mortal sin." 

This is a large admission, yet even in that open ad- 
mission there is a certain amount of honesty. Again 
and again in the Mah^bharata is this excuse pleaded. % 
Nay there is in the Mahabharata § the well-known 
story in Kaui"ika, called Satyavadin, the Truth-speaker, 
who goes to hell for having spoken the truth. He 
once saw men flying into the forest before robbers 
(dasyu). The robbers came up soon after them, and 
asked Kaujika, which way the fugitives had taken. 
He told them the truth, and the men were caught by 
the robbers and killed. But Kaujika, we are told, 
went to hell for having spoken the truth. 

The Hindus may seem to have been a priest-ridden 
race, and their devotion to sacrifice and ceremonial is 
well known. Yet this is what the poet of the Maha- 
bharata dares to say : 

" Let a thousand sacrifices (of a horse) and truth 

be weighed in the balance — truth will exceed the 

thousand sacrifices." || 

* V. 24. 

X I3412. Ill 13844 ; VII. 8742 ; VIII. 3436 3464. 
§ Mahabbarata VIII. 3448. 

II Muir, 1. c. p. 268 ; Mahabharata I. 3095. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS. 8l 

These are words addressed by 5akuntala, the 
deserted wife, to King Dushyanta, when he decHned 
to recognize her and his son. And when he refuses 
to Hsten to her appeal, what does she appeal to as 
the highest authority ? — The voice of conscience, 

" If you think I am alon*e," she says to the king, 
" you do not know that wise man within your heart. 
He knows of your evil deed — in his sight you commit 
sin. A man who has committed sin may think that 
no one knows it. The gods know it and the old man 
within."* 

This must suffice. I say once more that I do not 
wish to represent the people of India as 253 millions 
of angels, but I do wish it to be understood and to be 
accepted as a fact, that the damaging charge of 
untruthfulness brought against that people is utterly 
unfounded with regard to ancient times. It is not 
only not true, but the very opposite of the truth. As 
to modern times, and I date them from about 1000 
after Christ, I can only say that, after reading the 
accounts of the terrors and horrors of Mohammedan 
rule, my wonder is that so much of native virtue and 
truthfulness should have survived. You might as 
well expect a mouse to speak the truth before a cat, 
as a Hindu before a Mohammedan judge. If you 
frighten a child, that child will tell a lie — if you ter- 
rorise millions, you must not be surprised if they try 
to escape from your fangs. Truthfulness is a luxury, 
perhaps the greatest, and let me assure you, the most 
expensive luxury in our life — and happy the man who 
has been able to enjoy it from his very childhood. It 

* Mahibharata I. 3015-16. 



82 JVHA T CAN- INDIA TEA CH US ? 

may be easy enough in our days and in a free country, 
like England, never to tell a lie — but the older we 
grow, the harder we find it to be always true, to 
speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the 
truth. The Hindus too had made that discovery. 
They too knew how hard, nay how impossible it is, 
always to speak the truth, the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth. There is a short story in the 
5atapatha Brahma/^a, to my mind full of deep mean- 
ing, and pervaded by the real sense of truth, the real 
sense of the difficulty of truth. His kinsman said to 
Aru;/a Aupave^i, "Thou art advanced in years, 
establish thou the sacrificial fires." He replied: 
" Thereby you tell me henceforth to keep silence. 
For he who has established the fires must not speak 
an untruth, and only by not speaking at all, one 
speaks no untruth. To that extent the service of the 
sacrificial fire consists in truth."* 

I doubt whether in any other of the ancient litera- 
tures of the world you will find traces of that extreme 
sensitiveness of conscience which despairs of our ever 
speaking the truth, and which declares silence gold, 
and speech silver, though in a much higher sense 
than our proverb. 

What I should wish to impress on those who will 
soon find themselves the rulers of millions of human 
beings in India, is the duty to shake off national pre- 
judices, which are apt to degenerate into a kind of 
madness. I have known people with a brown skin 
whom I could look up to as my betters. Look for 
them in India, and you will find them, and if you 

* 5atapatha Brahniawa, taarislated by Eggeling, Sacred Books of 
the East, vol. xii. p. 313, § 20. 



TRUTHFUL CHARACTER OF THE HINDUS, 83 

meet with disappointments, as, no doubt you wilV, 
think of the people with white skins wliom you have 
trusted, and whom you can trust no more. We are 
all apt to be Pharisees in international judgments. I 
read only a few days ago in a pamphlet written by an 
enlightened politician, the following words : — 

" Experience only can teach that nothing is so 
truly astonishing to a morally depraved people as the 
phenomenon of a race of men in whose word perfect 
confidence may be placed ^ . . . . The natives are 
conscious of their inferiority in nothing so much as 
in this. They require to be taught rectitude of con- 
duct much more than literature and science." 

If you approach the Hindus with such feelings, 
you will teach them neither rectitude, nor science, 
nor literature. Nay, they might appeal to their own 
Uterature, even to their law-books, to teach us at least 
one lesson of truthfulness, truthfulness to ourselves, 
or, in other words, — humility. 

What does Yao-;lavalkya say t f 

" It is not our hermitage," he says — our religion 
we might say — " still less the color of our skin, that 
produces virtue ; virtue must be practised. There- 
fore let no one do to others what he would not have 
done to himself." 

And the Laws of the Manavas, which were so 
much abused by Mill, what do they teach t % 

" Evil doers think indeed that no one sees them ; 
but the gods see them, and the old man within.'' 

" Self is the witness of Self, Self is the refuge of 
Self. Do not despise thy own Self, the highest wit- 
ness of men." 

* Sir Charles Trevelyan, Christianity and Hinduism, p. 81. 
t IV. 65. X VIII. 85. § VIII. 90. 



84 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

"If, friend, thou thinkest thou art self-alone, re- 
member there is the silent thinker (the Highest Self) 
always within thy heart, and he sees what is good, 
and what is evil." * 

" O friend, whatever good thou mayest have done 
from thy very birth, all will go to the dogs if thou 
speak an untruth." 

Or in VasishZ/m, XXX. i : 
" Practise righteousness, not unrighteousness ; 
speak truth, not untruth ; look far, not near ; look up 
towards the Highest, not towards anything low." 

No doubt, there is moral depravity in India, and 
where, is there no moral depravity in this world ^' 
But to appeal to international statistics would be' 
I believe, a dangerous game. Nor must we forget 
that our standards of morality differ, and, on some 
points, differ considerably from those recognized in 
India ; and we must not wonder, if sons do not at 
once condemn as criminal what their fathers and grand- 
fathers considered right. Let us hold by all means 
to our sense of what is right and what is wrong ; but 
in judging others, whether in public or in private life, 
whether as historians or politicians, let us not forget 
that a kindly spirit will never do any harm. Certainly 
I can imagine nothing more mischievous, more 
dangerous, more fatal to the permanence of English 
rule in India, than for the young Civil Servants to go 
to that country with the idea that it is a sink of moral 
depravity, an ant's nest of lies ; for no one is so sure 
to go wrong, whether in public or in private life, as he 
who says in his haste ; " All men are liars." 

* VIII. $2. 



^uman Kntcre^t of Sanakrit Citerature* 



My first Lecture was intended to remove the pre- 
judice that India is and always must be a strange 
country to us, and that those vvrho have to live there 
will find themselves stranded, and far away from that 
living stream of thoughts and interests which carries 
us along in England and in other countries of Europe. 

My second Lecture was directed against another 
prejudice, namely, that the people of India with whom 
the young Civil Servants will have to pass the best 
years of their life are a race so depraved morally, and 
more particularly so devoid of any regard for truth, 
that they must always remain strangers to us, and 
that any real fellowship or friendship with them is 
quite out of the question. 

To-day I shall have to grapple with a third pre- 
judice, namely, that the literature of India, and more 
especially the classical Sanskrit literature, whatever 
may be its interest to the scholar and the antiquarian, 
has little to teach us which we cannot learn better 
from other sources, and that at all events it is of 
little practical use to young civilians. If only they 
learn to express themselves in Hindustani or Tamil, 
that is considered quite enough ; nay, as they have 



B6 iVHA T cAAT India Tea Ch us f 

to deal with men and with the ordinary affairs of 
life, and as, before everything else, they are to be 
men of the world and men of business, it is everi 
supposed to be dangerous, if they allowed themselves 
to become absorbed in questions of abstruse scholar- 
ship or in researches on ancient religion, mythology, 
and philosophy. 

I take the very opposite opinion, and I should 
advise every yoiing man who wishes to enjoy his life 
in India, and to spend his years there with profit to 
himself and to others, to learn Sanskrit, and to learn 
it well. 

I know it will be said. What can be the use of 
Sanskrit at the present day } Is ,not Sanskrit a dead 
language.? And are not the Hindus themselves 
ashamed of their ancient literature.? Do they not 
learn English, and do they not prefer Locke, and 
Hume and Mill to their ancient poets and philoso- 
phers ? 

No doubt Sanskrit, in one sense, is a dead language 
it was, I believe, a dead language more than two 
thousand years ago. Buddha, about 500 b. c com 
manded his disciples to preach in the dialects of the 
people ; and King A^roka, in the third century b c 
when he put up his Edicts, which were intended to be 
read or, at least, to be understood by the people had 
them engraved on rocks and pillars in the various 
local dialects from Cabul* in the North to Ballabhi in 
the South, from the sources of the Ganges and the 
Jumnah to Allahabad and Patna, nay even down to 
Urissa.^ These various dialects are as diffierent from 
Sanskrit as Italian is from Latin, and we have there- 
• See Cunningham, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. i, ,877., 



, HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERA TURE. 87 

fore good reason to suppose that, in the third century 
B. c, if not earlier, Sanskrit had ceased to be the 
spoken language of the people at large. 

There is an interesting passage in the ^ullavagga, 
where we are told that, even during Buddha's life- 
time, some of his pupils, who were Brahmans by 
birth, complained that people spoiled the words of 
Buddha by every one repeating them in his own 
dialect (nirutti). They proposed to translate his 
words into Sanskrit ; but he declined, and comiUianded 
that each man should learn his doctrine in his own 
language.* 

And there is another passage, quoted by Hardy in 
his Manual of Buddhism, p. 186, where we read that 
at the time of Buddha's first preaching each of the 
countless listeners thought that the sage was looking 
towards him, and was speaking to him in his own 
tongue, though the language used was Magadhi.f 

Sanskrit,' therefore, as a language spoken by the 
people at large, had ceased to exist in the third cen- 
tury B. c. 

Yet such is the marvellous continuity between the 
past and the present in India, that in spite of repeated 
social convulsions, religious reforms, and foreign 
invasions, Sanskrit may be said to be still the only 
language that is spoken over the whole extent of that 
vast country. 

Though the Buddhist sovereigns published their 
edicts in the vernaculars, public inscriptions and 

* ^ullavagga V. 33, i. The expression used is A'/^andaso arope- 
ma 'ti. 

* See Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, Sacred Books of the East, 
yol. xi. p. 142, 



«t 



gg WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USi 

private official documents continued to be composed 
in Sanskrit during the last two thousand yeafs. And 
though the language of the sacred writings of Bud- 
dhists and (9ainas was borrowed from the vulgar 
dialects, the literature of India never ceased to be 
written in Pawinean Sanskrit, while the few excep- 
tions, as, for instance, the use of Prakrit by women 
and inferior characters in the plays of Kalidasa and 
others, are themselves not without an important his- 
torical significance. 

Even at the present moment, after a century of 
English rule and English teaching, I believe that 
Sanskrit is more widely understood in India than Latin 
was in Europe at the time of Dante. 

Whenever I receive a letter from a learned man in 
India, it is written in Sanskrit. Whenever there is a 
controversy on questions of law and religion, the 
pamphlets published in India are written in Sanskrit. 
There are journals written in Sanskrit which must 
entirely depend for their support on readers who 
prefer that classical language to the vulgar dialects. 
There is The Pandit, published at Benares, containing 
not only editions of ancient texts, but treatises on 
modern subjects, reviews of books published in Eng- 
land, and controversial articles, all in Sanskrit. 

Another paper of the same kind is the Pratna 
Kamra-nandini, " the Delight of lovers of old things,' 
published likewise at Benares, and full of valuable 
materials. 

There is also the Vidyodaya, " the Rise of Know- 
ledge," a Sanskrit journal published at Calcutta, which 
sometimes contains important articles. There are 
probably others, which I do not know. 



HUMAN- INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 89 

There is a Monthly Serial published at Bombay, 
by M. Moreshwar Kunte, called the Shad-darshana- 
Chintanikd., or " Studies in Indian Philosophy," giving 
the text of the ancient systems of philosophy, with 
commentaries and treatises, written in Sanskrit, 
though in this case accompanied by a Marathi and an 
English translation. 

Of the Rig-veda, the most ancient of Sanskrit books, 
two editions are now coming out in monthly numbers, 
the one published at Bombay, by what may be called 
the Hberal party, the other at Prayaga (Allahabad) by 
Dayananda Sarasvati, the representative of Indian 
orthodoxy. The former gives a paraphrase in San- 
skrit, and a Marathi and an English translation ; the 
latter a full explanation in Sanskrit, followed by a 
vernacular commentary. These books are published 
by subscription, and the list of subscribers among the 
natives of India is very considerable. 

There are other journals, which are chiefly written 
in the spoken dialects, such as Bengali, Marathi, or 
Hindi ; but they contain occasional articles in San- 
skrit, as, for instance, the Harii'A^andra/^andrika, pub- 
lished at Benares, the lattvabodhin% published at 
Calcutta, and several more. 

It was only the other day that I saw in the Liberal, 
the journal of Keshub Chunder Sen's party, an account 
of a meeting between Brahmavrata Samadhyayi, a 
Vedic scholar of Nuddea, and Kashinath Trimbak 
Telang, a M.A. of the University of Bombay. The 
one came from the east, the other from the west, yet 
both could converse fiftently in Sanskrit.* 

Still more extraordinary is the number of Sanskrit 

* The Liberal, March I2, 1882. 



90 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US1 

texts, issuing from native presses, for which there 
seems to be a large demand, for if we write for copies 
to be sent to England, we often find that, after a year 
or two, all the copies have been bought up in India 
itself. That would not be the case with Anglo-Saxon 
texts in England, or with Latin texts in Italy ! 

But more than this, we are told that the ancient 
epic poems of that Mahabharata and Ramayaz/a are 
still recited in the temples for the benefit of visitors, and 
that in the villages large crowds assemble around the 
Kathaka, the reader of these ancient Sanskirt poems 
often interrupting his recitations with tears and sighs, 
when the hero of the poem is sent into banishment, 
while when, he returns to his kingdom, the houses of 
the village are adorned with lamps and garlands. Such 
a recitation of the whole of the Mahabharata is said to 
occupy ninety days, or sometimes half a year. * The 
people at large required, no doubt, that the Brahman 
narrator (Kathaka) should interpret the old poem, but 
there must be some few people present who understand, 
or imagine they understand, the old poetry of Vyasa 
and Valmiki. 

There are thousands of Brahmans f even now, when 
so little inducement exists for Vedic studies, who know 
the whole of the Rig-veda by heart and can repeat it ; 
and what applies to the Rig-veda applies to many 
other books. 

But even if Sanskrit were more of. a dead lansfuao-e 

* See R. G. Bhandarkar, Consideration of the date of the Maha- 
bharata, Journal of the R. A. S. of Bombay, i872; Talboys Wheeler, 
History of India, ii. 365, 572 ; Holtzmanli, Uber das alte indische 
Epos 1881, p. I ; Phear, The Aryan Village in India and Ceylon, P. 
19. 

t Hibbert Lectures, p. 157. . 



HUMAN IN TERES T OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 9 j 

than it really is, ail the living languages of India, both 
Aryan and Dravidian, draw their very life and soul from 
Sanskirt. ^ On this point, and on the great help that 
even a limited knowledge of Sanskrit would- render in 
the acquisition of the vernaculars, I, and others being 
better qualified than I am, have spoken so often, though 
without any practical effect, that I need not speak again. 
Any Candidate who knows but the elements of San- 
skirt grammer will well understand what I mean, 
whether his special vernacular may be Bengali, Hindu- 
stani, or even Tamil. To a classical scholar I can only 
say that between a Civil Servant who knows San- 
skrit and Hindustani, and another who knows Hindu- 
stani only, there is about the same difference in their 
power of forming an intelligent appreciation of 
India and its inhabitants, as there is between a traveller 
who visits Italy with a knowledge of Latin, and a party 
personally conducted to Rome by Messrs. Cook and 
Co. 

Let us examine, however the objection that San- 
skrit literature is a dead or an artificial literature, a 
little more carefully, in order to see whether there is 
not some kind of truth init. Some people hold that 
the literary works which we possess in Sanskirt never 
had any real life at all, that they were altogether schol- 
astic productions, and that therefore they can teach us 

* " Every person acquainted with the spoken speech of India knows 
perfectly well that its elevation to the dignity and usefulness of 
written speech has depended, and must still depend, upon its borrow- 
ing largely from its parent or kindred source ; that no man who is 
ignorant of Arabic or Sanskrit can write Hindustani or Bengali with 
elegance, purity, or precision, and that the condemnation of the classi- 
cal languages to oblivion would consign the dialects to utter helpless- 
ness and irretrievable barbarism." H. H. Wilson, Asiatic Journal^ 
Jan. 1836; vol. xix. p. 15. 



g2 tVHAT CAN INDIA TEACH tJSf 

nothing of what we really care for, namely the histori- 
cal growth of the Hindu mind. Others maintain that 
to the present moment, at all events, and after a cen- 
tury of English rule, Sanskirt literature has ceased to 
be a motive power in India, and that it can teach us 
nothing of what is passing now through the Hindu 
mind and influencing it for good or for evil. 

Let us look at the facts. Sanskrit literature is a 
wide and a vague term. If the Vedas, such as we now 
have them, were composed about 1500 b. c, and if it 
is a fact that considerable works continue to be written 
in Sanskrit even now, we have before us a stream of 
literary activity extending over three thousand four 
hundred years. With the exception of China there is 
nothing like this in the whole world. 

It is difficult to give an idea of the enormous extent 
and variety of that literature. We are only gradually 
becoming acquainted with the untold treasures which 
still exist in manuscripts, and with the titles of that 
still large number of works which must have existed 
formerly, some of them being still quoted by writers 
of the last three or four centuries."* 

The Indian Government has of late years ordered a 
kind of biblographical survey of India to be made and 
has sent some learned Sanskrit scholars, both European 
and native, to places where collections of Sanskrit 
MSS. are known to exist, in order to examine and 
catalogue them. Some of these catalogues have been 
published, and we learn from them that the number of 
separate works in Sanskrit, of which MSS. are still 

* It would be a most useful word for any young scholar to draw up 
a list of Sanskrit books which are quoted by later writers, but have not 
yet been met with in Indian libraries. 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 93 

in existence, amounts to about 10,000.* This is 
more, I believe than the whole classical literature of 
Greece and Italy put together. Much of it, no doubt, 
will be called mere rubbish ; but then you know that 
even in our days the writings of a very eminent philo- 
sopher have been called " mere rubbish." What I 
wish you to see is this, that there runs through the 
whole history of India, through its three or four thou- 
sand years, a high road, or, it is perhaps more accurate 
to say, a high mountain-path of literature. It may be 
remote from the turmoil of the plain, hardly visible 
perhaps to the millions of human beings in their daily 
struggle of life. It may have been trodden by a few 
solitary wanderers only. But to the historian of the 
human race, to the student of the development of the 
human mind, those few solitary wanderers are after all 
the true representatives of India from age to age. Do 
not let us be deceived. The true history of the world 
must always be the history of the few ; and as we 
measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, 
we must take the true measure of India from the poets 
of the Vepa, the sages of the Upanishads, the found- 
ers of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosphies and the 
authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the 
millions who are bom and die in their villages, and 
who have never for one moment been roused out of 
their drowsy dream of life. 

To large multitudes in India, no doubt, Sanskrit 
literature was not merely a dead literature, it was 
simply non-existent ! but the same might be said of 
almost every literature, and more particularly of the 
literature of the ancient world. 

* Hibbert L,ectures, p, 133, 



94 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US1 

Still, even beyond this, I am quite prepared to 
acknowledge to a certain extent the truth of the state- 
ment, that a great portion of Sanskrit literature has 
never been living and national, in the same sense in 
which the Greek and Roman literatures reflected at 
times the life of a whole nation ; and it is quite true 
besides, that the Sanskrit books which are best known 
to the public at large, belong to what might correctly 
be called the Renaissance period of Indian literature, 
wheR those who wrote Sanskrit had themselves to 
learn the language, as we learn Latin, and were 
conscious that they were writing for a learned and 
cultivated public only, and not for the people at 
large. 

This will require a fuller explanation. 

We may divide the whole of Sanskrit literature, 
beginning with the Rig-veda and ending with Daya- 
nanda's Introduction to his edition of the Rig-veda, 
his by no means uninteresting Rig-veda-bh?hiiika, into 
two great periods : that preceding the great Turanian 
invasion, and that following it. 

The former comprises the Vedic literature and the 
ancient literature of Buddhism, the latter all the 
rest. 

If I call the invasion which is generally called the 
invasion of the 6"akas, or the Scythians, or Indo-Scy- 
thians, or Turushkas, the Turanian invasion^ it is 
simply because I do not as yet wish to commit myself 
more than I can help as to the nationality of the 
tribes who took possession of India, or, at least, of the 
government of India, from about the first century b. c. 
to the third century a.d. 

They are best known by the name of Yueh-chi, this 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERA TURE. 95 

being the name by which they are called in Chinese 
chronicles. These Chinese chronicles form the prin- 
cipal source from which we derive our knowledge of 
these tribes, both before and after their invasion of 
India. Many theories have been started as to their 
relationship with other races. They are described as 
of pink and white complexion and as shooting from 
horseback ; and as there was some similarity between 
their Chinese name Yueh-chi and the Gothi or Goths, 
they were identified by Remusat* with those German 
tribes, and by others with the Getae, the neighbors of 
the Goths, Tod went even a step urther, and traced 
the (9ats in India and the Rajputs back to the Yueh- 
chi and Qetae.'\ Some light may come in time out 
of all this darkness, but for the present we must be 
satisfied with the fact that, between the first century 
before and the third century after our era, the 
greatest political revolution took place in India owing 
to the repeated inroads of Turanian, or, to use a still 
less objectionable term, of Northern tribes. Their 
presence in India, recorded by Chinese historians, is 
fully confirmed by coins, by inscriptions, and by the 
traditional history of the country, such as it is ; but 
to my mind nothing attests the presence of these 
foreign invaders more clearly than the break, or, I 
could almost say, the blank in the Brahmanical litera- 
ture of India from the first century before to the 
third century after our era. 

If we consider the political and social state of that 

* Recherches sur les langues Tartares, 1820, vol. i. p. 327 ; 
Lassen, I. A., vol. ii. p. 359. 

t Lassen, who at first rejected the identification of 6^^ts and Yueh- 
chi, was afterwards inclined to accept it. 



96 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us i 

country, we can easily understand what would happen 
in a case of invasion and conquest by a warlike race. 
The invaders would take possession of the strongholds 
or castles, and either remove the old Rajahs, or make 
them their vassals and agents. Everything else 
would then go on exactly as before. The rents 
would be paid, the taxes collected, and the life of the 
villagers, that is, of the great majority of the people 
of India, would go on almost undisturbed by the 
change of government. The only people who might 
suffer would be, or at all events, might be the priestly 
caste, unless they should come to terms with the new 
conquerors. The priestly caste, however, was also to 
a great extent the literary caste, and the absence of 
their old patrons, the native Rajahs, might well pro- 
duce for a time a complete cessation of literary 
activity. The rise of Buddhism and its formal 
adoption by King Aj"oka had already considerably 
shaken the power and influence of the old Brah manic 
hierarchy. The Northern conquerors, whatever their 
religion may have been, were certainly not believers 
in the Veda. They seem to have made a kind of com- 
promise with Buddhism, and it is probably due to that 
compromise, or to an amalgamation of 6'aka legends 
with Buddhist doctrines, that we owe the so-called 
Mahayana form of Buddhism, — and more particularly 
the Amitabha worship, — which was finally settled at 
the Council under Kanishka, one of the Turanian 
rulers of India in the first century a.d. 

If then we divide the whole of Sanskrit litera- 
ture into these two periods, the one anterior to the 
great Turanian invasion, the other posterior to it, we 
may call the literature of the former period ancie7it 



HUMAN IN TEREST OF SANS^IT LITER A TURE. g^ 

and natural, that of the latter '^nodern and artu 
fieial. 

Of the former period we possess, first, what has 
been called the Veda, i. e. Knowledge, in the widest 
sense of the word — a considerable mass of literature, 
yet evidently a wreck only, saved out of a general 
deluge ; secondly, the works collected in the Buddhist 
Tripi/aka, now known to us chiefly in what is called 
the Pali dialect, the Gatha dialects, and Sanskrit, and 
probably much added to in later times. 

The second period of Sanskrit literature compre- 
hends everything else. Both periods may be sub- 
divided again, but this does not concern us at presen^t. 

Now I am quite willing to admit that the literature 
of the second period, the modern Sanskrit literature, 
never was a living or national literature. It here 
and' there contains remnants of earlier times, adapted 
to the literary, religious, and moral tastes of a later 
period ; and whenever we are able to disentangle 
those ancient elements, they may serve to throw light 
on the past, and, to a certain extent, supplement 
what has been lost in the literature of the Vedic 
times. The metrical Law-books, for instance, contain 
old materials which existed during the Vedic period, 
partly in prose, as Sutras, partly in more ancient 
metres, as Gathas. The Epic poems, the Mahabha- 
rata and Ramaya?/a, have taken the place of the old 
Itihasas and Akhyanas. The Pura^as, even, may 
contain materials, though much altered, of what was 
called in Vedic literature the Pura«a.* ^ 

But the great mass of that later literature is artifi- 
cial or scholastic, full of interesting compositions, and 

* Hibbert Lectures, p. 154, note. 



98 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US I 

by no means devoid of originality and occasional 
beauty ; yet, with all that, curious only, and appealing 
to the interests of the Oriental scholar far more than 
the broad human sympathies of the historian and the 
philosopher. 

It is different with the ancient literature of India, 
the literature dominated b}^ the Vedic and the Bud- 
dhistic religions. That literature opens to us a chapter 
in what has been called the Education of the Human 
Race, to which we can find no parallel anywhere else. 
Whoever cares for the historical growth of our lang- 
uage, that is, of our thoughts ; whoever cares for the 
first intelligible development of religion and my- 
thology ; whoever cares for the first foundation of 
what in later times we call the sciences of astronomy, 
metronomy, grammar, and etymology ; whoever cares 
for the first intimations of philosophical thought, for 
the first attempts at regulating family life, village 
life, and state life, as founded on religion, ceremonial, 
tradition and contract (samaya) — must in future pay 
the same attention to the literature of the Vedic period 
as to the literatures of Greece and Rome and Germany. 

As to the lessons which the early literature of 
Buddhism may teach us, I need not dwell on them 
at present. If I may judge from the numerous 
questions that are addressed to me with regard to 
that religion and its striking coincidences with Chris- 
tianity, Buddhism has already become a subject of 
general interest, and will and ought to become so 
more and more. On that whole class of literature, 
however, it is not my intention to dwell in this short 
course of Lectures, which can hardly suffice even for 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE, go 

a general survey of Vedic literature, and for an 
elucidation of the principal lessons which, I think, 
we may learn from the Hymns, the Brahma;^as, the 
Upanishads, and the Sutras. 

It was a real misfortune that Sanskrit literature 
became first known to the learned public in Europe 
through specimens belonging to the second, or, what 
I called, the Renaissance period. The Bhagavadgita, 
the plays of Kalidasa, such as 5akuntala or Urvai-f, 
a few episodes from the Mahabharata and Ramaya;^a» 
such as those of Nala and the Ya^/ladattabadha, the 
fables of the Hitopa'deja, and the sentences of Bhartr/- 
hari are, no doubt, extremely curious ; and as, at the 
time when they first became known in Europe, they 
were represented to be of extreme antiquity, and the 
work of a people formerly supposed to be iquite 
incapable of high literary efforts, they naturally 
attracted the attention of men such as Sir William 
Jones in England, Herder and Goethe in Germany, 
who were pleased to speak of them in terms of highest 
admiration. It was the fashion at that time to speak 
of Kalidasa, as, for instance, Alexander von Humboldt 
did even in so recent a work as his Kosmos, as " the 
great contemporary of Virgil and Horace, who lived 
at the splendid Court of Vikramaditya, this Vikra- 
maditya being supposed to be the founder of the 
Sam vat era, 56 B.C. But all this is now changed. 
Whoever the Vikramaditya was who is supposed to 
have defeated the ^akas, and to have founded another 
era, the Tamvat era, 56 B.C., he certainly did not live in 
the first century B.C. Nor are the Indians looked 
upon any longer as an illiterate race, and their poetry as 
popular and artless. On the contrary, they are judged 



lOO WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US} 

now by the same standards as Persians and Arabs, 
Italians or French ; and, measured by that standard, 
such works as Kalidasa's plays are not superior to 
many plays that have long been allowed to rest in dust 
and peace on the shelves of our libraries. Their an- 
tiquity is no longer believed in by any critical San- 
skrit scholar. Kalidasa is mentioned v/ith Bhdravi as 
a famous poet in an inscription* dated a.d. 585-6 (507 
►Saka era), and for the present I see no reason to place 
him much earlier, as to the Laws of Manu, which used 
to be assigned to a fabulous antiquity,! and are so still 
sometimes by those who write at random or at second- 
hand, I doubt whether, in their present form, they can 
be older than the fourth century of our era, nay I am 
quite prepared to see an even later date assigned to 
them. I know this will seem heresy to many San- 
skrit scholars, but we must try to be honest to our- 
selves. Is there any evidence to constrain us to assign 
the Manava-dharma-i"astra, such as we now possess it, 
written in continuous vSlokas, to any date anterior to 
300 A.D, 1 And if there is not, why should we not 
openly state it, challenge opposition, and feel grateful 
if our doubts can be removed } 

That Manu was a name of high legal authority be- 
fore that time, and that Manu and the Manavam are 
frequently quoted in the ancient legal Sutras, is quite 
true ; but this serves only to confirm the conviction 
that the literature which succeeded the Turanian in- 

* Published by Fleet in the Indian Antiquary, 1876, pp. 68-73, ^'"'^ 
first mentioned by Dr. Bhao Daji, Journal Asiatic Society, Bombay 
Branch, vol. ix. 

t Sir William Jones fixed their date at 12S0 B.C.; Elphinstone as 
900 B.C. It has recently been stated that they could not reasonably 
be placed later than the fifth century s.c. 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. loi 

vasion is full of wrecks saved from the intervening 
deluge. If what we call the Laws of Maim had really 
existed as a Code of Laws, like the Code of Justinian, 
during previous centuries, is it likely that it should 
nowhere have been quoted and appealed to ? 

Varahamihira I'who died 587 a.d.) refers to Manu 
several times, but not to a Manava-dharma-jastra ; 
and the only time where he seems actually to quote a 
number of verses from Manu, these verses are not to 
be met with in our text.* 

* A very useful indication of the age of the Dharma-sutras, as com- 
pared with the metrical Dharma-jastras or Sa7;^hitas, is to be found in 
the presence or absence in them of any reference to written documents. 
Such written documents, if they existed, could hardly be passed over 
in silence in law books, particularly when the nature of witnesses is 
discussed in support of loans, pledges, etc. Now v*?e see that in treat- 
ing of the law of debt and debtors,^ the Dharma-sutras of Gautama, 
Baudhayana, and Apastamba never mention evidence in writing. 
Vasish/^a only refers to written evidence, but in a passage which may 
be interpolated,- considering that in other respects his treatment of 
the law of debt is very crude. Manu's metrical code shows here again 
its usual character. It is evidently based on ancient originals, and 
when it simply reproduces them, gives us the impression of great 
antiquity. But it freely admits more modern ingredients, and does so 
in our case. It speaks of witnesses, fixes their minimum number at 
three, and discusses very minutely their qualifications and disqualifi- 
cations, without saying a word about written documents. But in one 
place (VIII. 168) it speaks of the valuelessness of v/ritten agreements 
obtained by force, thus recognizing the practical employment of 
writing for commercial transactions. Professor Joly,"^ it is true, 
suggests that this verse may be a later addition, particularly as it 
occurs totidem verbis in Narada (IV. 55) ; but the final composition of 
Manu's Sa;«hita, such as we possess it, can hardly be referred to a 
period when writing was not yet used, at all events for commercial 
purposes. Manu's Law-book is older than Ya^«avalkya's, in which 



■^ Uber das Indische Schuldrecht von J. Jolly, p. 29 [. 

* Jolly, 1. c. p-. 322. - L. c. p' 2Q0 



102 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US ^ 

I believe it will be found that the century in which 
Varahamihara lived and wrote was the age of the 
literary Renaissance in India. That Kalidasa and 
Bharavi were famous at that time, we know from the 
evidence of inscriptions. We also know that during 
that century the fame of Indian literature had reached 
Persia, and that the King of Persia, Khosru Nushir- 
van, sent his physician, Barzoi, to India, in order to 
translate the fables of the Pa?1/^atantra, or rather their 
original, from Sanskrit into Pahlavi. The famous 
" Nine Gems," or ''the nine classics," as we should 
say, have been referred, at least in part, to the same 
age,* and I doubt whether we shall be able to assign 
a much earlier date to anything we possess of San- 
skrit literature, excepting always. the Vedic and Bud- 
dhistic writings. 

Although the specimens of this modern Sanskrit 
literature, when they first became known, served to 
arouse a general interest, and serve even now to keep 
alive a certain superficial sympathy for Indian litera- 
ture, more serious students had soon disposed of these 
compositions, and while gladly admitting their claim 
to be called pretty and attractive, could not think of 
allowing to Sanskrit literature a place among the 

writing has become a familiar subject. Vislvm often agrees literally 
with Ya^^zavalkya, while Narada, as showing the fullest development 
of the law of debt, is most likely the latest.* 

See Br/hatsa;;^hita, ed. Kern, pref. p. 43; Journal of the R. A. S. 
1875, p. 106. 

* Kern, Preface to Brmatsa;/^hita, p. 20. 



* Jolly, 1. c. p. 322. He places Katyayana and B/'/haspati after 
Narada, possibly Vyasa and Harita also. See ^Iso Stenzler, Z. d, D. 
M, G. ix. 664. 



Mm AN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 103 

world-literatures, a place by the side of Greek and 
Latin, Italian, French, English or German. 

There was indeed a time when people began to 
imagine that all that was worth knowing about Indian 
literature was known, and that the only ground on 
which Sanskrit could claim a place among the recog- 
nized branches of learning in a University was its 
usefulness for the study of the Science of Language. 

At that very time, however, now about forty years 
ago, a new start was made, which has given to San- 
skrit scholarship an entirely new character. The 
chief author of that movement was Burnouf, then 
Professor at the College de France in Paris, an excel- 
lent scholar, but at the same time a man of wide views 
and true historical instincts, and the last man to waste 
his life on mere Nalas and 5akuntalas. Being brought 
up in the old traditions of the classical school in 
France (his father was the author of the well-known 
Greek Grammar), then for a time a promising young 
barrister, with influential friends such as Guizot, 
Thiers, Mignet, Villemain, at his side, and with a 
brilliant future before him, he was not likely to spend 
his Irfe on pretty Sanskrit ditties. What he wanted 
when he threw himself on Sanskrit was history, human 
history, world-history, and with an unerring grasp he 
laid hold of Vedic literature and Buddhist literature, 
as the two stepping-stones in the slough of Indian 
literature. He died young, and has left a few arches 
only of the building he wished to rear. But his spirit 
lived on in his pupils and his friends, and few would 
deny that the first impulse, directly or indirectly, to 
all that has been accomplished since by the students 



104 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US^ 

of Vedic and Buddhist literature, was given by Burnouf 
and his lectures at the College de Fra?tce. 

What then, you may ask, do we find in that ancient 
Sanskrit literature and cannot find anywhere else ? 
My answer is. We find there the Aryan man, whom 
we'know in his various characters, as Greek, Roman, 
German, Celt, and Slave, in an entirely new charac- 
ter. Whereas in his migrations northward his active 
and political energies are called out and brought to 
their highest perfection, we find the other side of the 
human character, the "passive and meditative, carried 
to its fullest growth in India. In some of the hymns 
of the Rig-veda we can still watch an earlier phase. 
We see the Aryan tribes taking possession of the 
land, and under the guidance of such warlike gods as 
Indra and the Maruts, defending their new homes 
against the assaults of the black-skinned aborigines 
as well as against the inroads of later Aryan colonists. 
But that period of war soon came to an end, and when 
the great mass of the people had once settled down 
in their homesteads, the military and political duties 
seem to have been monopolized by what we call a 
caste"^, that is by a small aristocracy, while the great 

* During times of conquest and migration, such as are represented 
to us in the hymns of the Rig-veda, the system of castes, as it is 
described, for instance, in the Laws of Manu, would have been a 
simple impossibility. It is doubtful whether such a system was 
ever more than a social ideal, but even for such an ideal the 
materials would have been wanting during the period when the 
Aryas were first taking possession of the land of the Seven Rivers. 
On the other hand, even during that early period, there must have 
been a division of labor, and hence we expect to find and do find in 
the gramas of the Five Nations, warriors, sometimes called nobles, 
leaders, kings ; counsellors^ sometimes called priests, prophets, 
judges ; and vjorking men, whether ploughers, or builders, or road- 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 103 

majority of the people were satisfied with spending 
their days within the narrow spheres of their villages, 
little concerned about the outside world, and content 
with the gifts that nature bestowed on them, without 
much labor. We read in the Mahabharata (XI 1 1. 
22) : 

" There is fruit on the trees in every forest, which 
every one who likes may pluck without trouble. 
There is cool and sweet water in the pure rivers here 
and there. There is a soft bed made of the twigs of 
beautiful creepers. And yet wretched people suffer 
pain at the door of the rich ! " 

At first sight we may feel inclined to call this 
quiet enjoyment of life, this mere looking on, a 
degeneracy rather than a growth. It seems so dif- 
ferent from what we think life ought to be. Yet, 
from a higher point of view it may appear that those 
Southern Aryans have chosen the good part, or at 
least the part good for them, while we, Northern 
Aryans, have been careful and troubled about many 
things. 

It is at all events a problem worth considering 
whether, as there is in nature a South antl a North, 
there are not two hemispheres also in human nature, 
both worth developing— the active, combative, and 
political on one side, the passive, meditative, and 
philosophical on the other; and for the solution o^ 
that problem no literature furnishes such ample 
materials as that of the Veda, beginning with the 
Hym.ns and ending with the Upanishads. We enter 
into a new world — not always an attractive one, least 

makers. These three divisions we can clearly perceive even in the 
early hymns of the Rig-veda. 



1 06 ^^^ T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? 

• 

of all to us ; but it possesses one charm, it is real, it 
is of natural growth, and like everything of natural 
growth. I believe it had a hidden purpose, and was 
intended to teach us some kind of lesson that is 
worth learning, and that certainly we could learn no- 
where else. We are not called upon either to admire 
or to despise that ancient Vedic literature ; we have 
simply to study and to try to understand it. 

There have been silly persons who have represented 
the development of the Indian mind as superior to any 
other, nay, who would make us go back to the Veda or 
to the sacred writing of the Buddhists in order to find 
there a truer religion, a purer morality, and a more 
sublime philosoph}^ than our own. I shall not even 
mention the names of these writers or the titles of their 
works. But I feel equally impatient when I see other 
scholars criticising the ancient literatures of India as if 
it were the work of the nineteenth century, as if it re- 
presented an enemy that must be defeated and that can 
claim no mercy at our hands. That the Veda is full of 
childish, silly, even to our minds monstrous concep- 
tions, who would deny } But even these monstrosities 
are interesting and instructive ; nay, many of them, 
if we can but make allowance for different ways of 
thought and language, contain germs of truth and 
rays of light, all the more striking, because breaking 
upon us through the veil of the darkest night. 

Here lies the general, the truly human interest which 
the ancient literature of India possesses, and whicli 
gives it a claim on the attention, not only of Oriental 
scholars or of students of ancient history, but of every 
educated man and woman. 

There are problems which we may put aside for a 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 107 

time, aye, which we must put aside while engaged 
each in our own hard struggle for life, but which will 
recur for all that, and which, whenever they do recur, 
will stir us more deeply than we like to confess to 
others, or even to ourselves. It is true that with us one 
day only out of seven is set apart for rest and medita- 
tion, and for the consideration of what the Greeks 
called r<^ /ie;/z(rr<^,— " the greatest things." It is true 
that the seventh day also is passed by many of us 
either in mere church-going routine or in thoughtless 
rest. But whether on week-days or on Sundays, 
whether in youth or in old age, there are moments, 
rare though they be, 3^et for all that the most critical 
moments of our life, when the old simple questions 
of humanity return to us in all their intensity, and we 
ask ourselves. What are we } What is this life on 
earth meant for .-* Are we to have no rest here, but 
to be always toiling and building up our own happiness 
out of the ruins of the happiness of our neighbors } 
And when we have made our home on earth as com- 
fortable as it can be made with steam and gas and 
electricity, are we really so much happier than the 
Hindu in his primitive homestead } 

With us, as I said just now, in these Northern 
climates, where life is and always must be a struggle, 
and a hard struggle too, and where accumulation of 
wealth has become almost a necessity to guard against 
the uncertainties of old age or the accidents inevitable 
in our complicated social life, with us, I say, and in our 
society, hours of rest and meditation are but few and 
far between. It was the same as long as we know 
the history of the Teutonic races ; it was the same 
even with Romans and Greeks. The European climate 



io8 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf 

with its long cold winters, in many places also the 
difficulty of cultivating the soil, the conflict of inter- 
ests between small comunities has developed the in- 
stinct of self-preservation (not to say, self-indulgence) 
to such an extent that most of the virtues and most 
of the vices of the European society can be traced 
back to that source. Our own character was formed 
under these influences, by inheritance, by education, 
by necessity. We all lead a fighting-life ; our highest 
ideal of life is a fighting-life. We work till we can 
work no longer, and are proud, like old horses, to die 
in harness. We point with inward satisfaction to 
what we and our ancestors have achieved by hard 
work, in founding a family, or a business, a town or a 
state. We point to the marvels of what we call 
civilization — our splendid cities, our high-roads and 
bridges, our ships, our railways, our telegraphs, our 
electric light, our pictures, our statues, our music, 
our theatres. We imagine we have made life on 
earth quite perfect ; in some cases so perfect that we 
are almost sorry to leave it again. But the lesson 
which both Brahmans and Buddhists are never tired 
of teaching is that this life is but a journey from one 
village to another, and not a resting-place. Thus we 
read : * 

" As a man journeying to another village may enjoy 
a night's rest in the open air, but, after leaving his 
resting-place, proceeds again on his journey the next 
day, thus father, mother, wife, and wealth are. all but 
like a night's rest to jus — wise people do not cling to 
them for ever." 

Instead of sirtiply despising this Indian view of 
life, might we not pause for a moment and consider 

* Eochtlingk, Sprliche, 5101. 



Mm AN- iMTkREST OF SANSKIRT LITE k A TURK, 109 

whether their philosophy of life is entirely wrong, 
and ours entirely right ; whether this earth was 
really meant for work only (for with us pleasure also 
has been changed into work), for constant hurry and 
flurry ; or whether we, sturdy Northern Aryans, might 
not have been satisfied with a little less of work, and 
a little less of so-called pleasure, but with a little more 
of thought, and a little more of rest For, short as 
our life is, we are not mere Mayflies that are born in 
the morning to die at night. We have a past to look 
back to and a future to look forward to, and it may 
be that some of the riddles of the future find their 
solution in the wisdom of the past. 

Then why should we always fix our eyes on the 
present only ? Why should we always be racing, 
whether for wealth or for power or for fame ? Why 
should we never rest and be thankful ? 

I do not deny that the manly vigor, the silent 
endurance, the public spirit, and the private virtues 
too of the citizens of European states represent one 
sid«, it may be a very important side, of the destiny 
which man has to fulfil on earth. 

But there is surely another side of our nature, and 
possible another destiny open to man in his journey 
across this life, which should not be entirely ignored. 
If we turn our eyes to the East, and particularly to 
India, where life is, or at all events was, no very 
severe struggle, where the climate was mild, the soil 
fertile, where vegetable food in small quantities 
sufficed to keep the body in health and strength, 
where the simplest hut or cave in a forest was 
all the shelter required, and where social life never 
assumed the gigantic, aye monstrous proportions of 



X I o ^//^ ^ CA N INDIA TEA CH US f 

a London or Paris, but fulfilled itself within the 
narrow boundaries of village communities, — was it 
not, I say, natural there, or, if you like, was it not 
intended there, that another side of human nature 
should be developed — not the active, the combative 
and acquisitive, but the passive, the meditative and 
reflective ? Can we wonder that the Aryans who 
stepped as strangers into some of the happy fields 
and valleys along the Indus or the Ganges should 
have looked upon life as a perpetual Sunday or 
Holyday, or a kind of Long Vacation, delightful 
so long as it lasts, but which must come to an end 
sooner or later ? Why should they have accumulated 
wealth ? why should they have built palaces ? why 
should they have toiled day and night ? After hav- 
ing provided from day to day for the small necessi- 
ties of the body, they thought they had the right, it 
may be the duty, to look round upon this strange 
exile, to look inward upon themselves,- upward to 
something not themselves, and to see whether they 
could not understand a little of the true purport of 
that mystery which we call life on earth. 

Of course zve should call such notions of life dreamy, 
unreal, unpractical, but may not they look upon our 
notions of life as short-sighted, fussy, and, in the end, 
most unpractical, because involving a sacrifice of life 
for the sake of life ? 

No doubt these are both extreme views, and they 
have hardly ever been held or realized in that extreme 
form by any nation, whether in the East or in the 
West. We are not always plodding — we sometimes 
allow ourselves an hour of rest and peace and thought 
— nor were the ancient people of India always dream- 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKIRT LITERA TUkh. n i 

iiig and meditating on roc jikyiara on the great 
problems of life, but, when called upon, we know that 
they too could fight like heroes, and that, without 
machinery, they could by patient toil raise even the 
meanest handiwork into a work of art, a real joy to 
maker and to the buyer. 

All then that I wish to put clearly before you is 
this, that the Aryan man, who had to fulfil his mission 
in India, might naturally be deficient in many of the 
practical and fighting virtues, which were developed in 
the Northern Aryans by the very struggle without 
which they could not have survived, but that his life 
on earth had not therefore been entirely wasted. His 
very view of life, though we cannot adopt it in this 
Northern climate, may yet act as a lesson and a warn- 
ing to us, not, for the sake of life, to sacrifice the 
highest objects of life. 

The greatest conqueror of antiquity stood in silent 
wonderment before the Indian Gymnosophists, regret- 
ting that he could not communicate with them in 
their own language, and that their wisdom could not 
reach him except through the contaminating channels 
of sundry interpreters. 

That need not be so at present. Sanskrit is no 
longer a difficult language, and I can assure every 
young Indian Civil Servant that if he will but go to 
the fountain-head of Indian wisdom, he will find there, 
among much that is strange and useless, some 
lessons of life which are worth learning, and which 
we in our haste are too apt to forget or to despise. 

Let me read you a few sayings only, which you 
may still hear repeated in India when, after the heat 
of the day, the old and the. young assemble together 



ti2 



■WI^AT CAN tNblA TEACH t/Sf 



under the shadow of their village tree— sayings which 
to them seern truth, to us, I fear, mere truism ! 

" As all have to sleep together laid low in the earth, 
why do foolish people wish to injure one another ?* 

" A man seeking for eternal happiness (moksha) 
might obtain it by a hundredth part of the suffer- 
ings which a foolish man endures in the pursuit of 

riches. t 

" Poor men eat more excellent bread than the rich ; 
for hunger gives it sweetness. $ 

" Our body is like the foam of the sea, our life like 
a bird, our company with those whom we love does 
not last for ever ; why then sleepest thou, my son ? § 

*' As two logs of wood meet upon the ocean and then 
separate again, thus do living creatures meet.li 

" Our meeting with wives, relations, and friends, 
occurs on our journey. Let a man therefore see clearly 
where he is, whither he will go, what he is, why tarry- 
ing here, and why grieving for anything.^ 

"Family, wife, children, our very body and our 
wealth, they all pass away. They do not belong to us. 
What then is ours 1 Our good and our evil deeds.** 

" When thou goest away from here, no one will 
follow thee. Only thy good and thy evil deeds, they 
will follow thee wherever thou goest.tt 

" Whatever act, good or bad, a man performs, of that 
by necessity he receives the recompense.ft 

"According to the Veda §§ the soul (life) is eternal, 
but the body of all creatures is perishable. When 

* Mahabh XL 121. t Pan^at. II. 127 (117). 

X Mahabh. V. 1144. § Mahabh. XII. 12050. 

1! L. c. XII. 869. IT L. c. XII. 872. 

** L. c. XII. 12453. tt L. c. XIL 12456. 

n L. c. III. 13846 (239). §§ L. c. III. 13864. 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE, 113 

the body is destroyed, the soul departs elsewhere, 
fettered by the bonds of our works. 

'' If I know that my own body is not mine, and yet 
that the whole earth is mine, and again that it is both 
mine and thine, no harm can happen then.^ 

" As a man puts on new garments in this world, 
throwing aside those which he formerly wore, even so 
the Self of man puts on new bodies which are in 
accordance with his acts.f 

" No weapons will hurt the Self of man, no fire will 
burn it, no water moisten it, no wind will dry it up. 

"It is not to be hurt, not to be burnt, not to be 
moistened, not to be dried up. It is imperishable, 
unchanging, immoveable, without beginning. 

" It is said to be immaterial, passing all understand- 
ing, and unchangeable. If you know the Self of man 
to be all this, grieve not. 

" There is nothing higher than the attainment of 
the knowledge of the Self.$ 

" All living creatures are the dwelling of the Self 
who lies enveloped in matter, who is immortal, and 
spotless. Those who worship the Self, the immove- 
able, living in a moveable dwelling, become immortal. 

^' Despising everything else, a wise man should 
strive after the knowledge of the Self/"' 

We shall have to return to this subject again, for 
this knowledge of the Self is really the Veddnta, that 
is, the end, the highest goal of the Veda. The highest 
wisdom of Greece was " to know ourselves ; " the 
highest wisdom of India is " to know our Self." 

* Kam. Nitis, i, 33 (Boehtlingk, 918). 

% Vish«u-sAtras XX. 50-53. 

t Apastamba Dharma-sutras I. 8, 22. 



1 14 WHA T CAN- INDIA TEA CH US ? 

If I were asked to indicate by one word the dis- 
tinguishing feature of the Indian character, as I have 
here tried to sketch it, I should say it was a transcen- 
dent, using that word, not in its strict technical 
sense, as fixed by Kant, but in its more general 
acceptation, as denoting a mind bent on transcending 
tke limits of empirical knowledge. There are minds 
perfectly satisfied with empirical knowledge, a knowl- 
edge of facts, well ascertained, well classified, and 
well labelled. Such knowledge may assume very 
vast proportions, and, if knowledge is power, it may 
impart great power, real intellectual power to the 
man who can wield and utilize it. Our own age is 
proud of that kind of knowledge, and to be content 
with it, and never to attempt to look beyond it, is, I 
believe, one of the happiest states of mind to be in. 

But, for all that, there is a Beyond, and he who 
has once caught a glance of it, is like a man who has 
gazed at the sun — wherever he looks, everywhere he 
sees the image of the sun. Speak to him of finite 
things, and he will tell you that the Finite is impossi- 
ble and meaningless without the Infinite. Speak to 
him of death, and he will call it birth ; speak to him 
of time, and he will call it the mere shadow of eter- 
nity. To us the senses seem to be the organs, the 
tools, the most powerful engines of knowledge ; to 
him they are, if not actually deceivers, at all events 
heavy fetters, checking the flight of the spirit. To 
us this earth, this life, all that we see, and hear, and 
touch is certain. Here, we feel, is our home, here lie 
our duties, here our pleasures. To him this earth is 
a thing that once was not, and that again will cease 
to be ; this life is a short dream from which we shall 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRJT LITER A TURE. 115 

soon awake. Of nothing he professes greater ignor- 
ance than of what to others seems to be most certain, 
namely that we see, and hear, and touch ; and as to 
our home, wherever that may be, he knows that cer- 
tainly it is not here. 

Do not suppose that such men are mere dreamers. 
Far from it ! And if we can only bring ourselves to 
be quite honest to ourselves, we shall have to confess 
that at times we all have been visited by these trans- 
cendental aspirations, and have been able to under- 
stand what Wordsworth meant when he spoke of 
those 

' Obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things. 
Fallings from us, vanishings ; 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in virorlds not realised.' 

The transcendent temperament acquired no doubt 
a more complete supremacy in the Indian character 
than anywhere else : but no nation, and no individual, 
is entirely without that " yearning beyond ;" indeed 
we all know it under a more familiar name — namely, 
Religion. 

It is necessary, however, to distinguish between 
religion and a religion, quite as much as in another 
branch of philosophy we have to distinguish between 
language and a language or many languages. A 
man may accept a religion, he may be converted to 
the Christian religion, and he may change hiis own 
particular religion from time to time, just as he may 
speak different languages. But in order to have a 
religion, a man must have religion. He must once 
at least in his life have looked beyond the horizon of 



1 1 6 WIIA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US t 

this world, and carried away in his mind an impres- 
sion of the Infinite, which will never leave him again. 
A being satisfied with the world of sense, unconscious 
of its finite nature, undisturbed by the limited or 
negative character of all perceptions of the senses, 
would be incapable of any religious concepts. Only 
when the finite character of all human knowledge 
has been perceived is it possible for the human mind 
to conceive that which is beyond the Finite, call it 
what you like, the Beyond, the Unseen, the Infinite, 
the Supernatural, or the Divine. That step must 
have been taken before religion of any kind becomes 
possible. What kind of religion it will be, depends 
on the character of the race which elaborates it, its 
surroundings in nature, and its experience in history. 
Now we may seem to know a great many religions 
— J speak here, of course, of ancient religions only, of 
what are sometimes called national or autochthonous 
religions — not of those founded in later times by in- 
dividual prophets or reformers. 

Yet, among those ancient religions we seldom 
know, what after all is the most important point, their 
origin and their gradual growth. The Jewish religion 
is represented to us as perfect and complete from the 
very first, and it is with great difficulty that we can 
discover its real beginnings and its historical growth. 
And take the Greek and the Roman religions, take 
the religions of the Teutonic, Slavonic or Celtic tribes, 
and you will find that their period of growth has al- 
ways passed, long before we know them, and that 
from the time we know them all their changes are 
purely metainorpkie^-'C\iZx\%<t^ in form of substances 
ready at hand. 



BtlMAN- INTEREST OP SANSKRIT LITER A tURE, 1 1 y 

Now let us look to the ancient inhabitants of India. 
With them, first of all, religion was not only one inter- 
est by the side of many. It was the all-absorbing in- 
terest ; it embraced not only worship and prayer, but 
what we call philosophy, morality, law, and govern- 
ment, — all was pervaded by religion. Their whole 
life was to them a religion — everything else was, as it 
were, a mere concession made to the ephemeral re- 
quirements of this life. 

What then can we learn from the ancient religious 
literature of India — or from the Veda } 

It requires no very profound knowledge" of Greek 
religion and Greek language to discover in the Greek 
deities the original outlines of certain physical phe- 
nomena. Every schoolboy knows that in Zeits there is 
something of the sky, in Poseidon of the sea, in Hades 
of the lower world, in Apollo of the sun, in Artemis of 
the moon, in Heplmstos of the fire. But for all that, 
there is, from a Greek point of view, a very consider- 
able difference between Zens and the sky, between 
Poseidon and the sea, between Apollo and the sun, 
between Artemis and the moon. 

Now what do we find in the Veda t No doubt here 
and there a few philosophical hymns which have been 
quoted so often that people have begun to imagine 
that the Veda is a kind of collection of Orphic hymns. 
We also find some purely mythological hymns, in 
which the Devas or gods have assumed nearly as 
much dramatic personality as in the Homeric hymns. 

But the great majority of Vedic hymns consists in 
simple invocations of the fire, the water, the sky, the 
sun, and the storms, often under the same names which 
afterwards became the proper name of Hindu deities, 



tl8 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf 

but as yet nearly free from all that can be called irra- 
tional or mythological. There is nothing irrational, 
nothing I mean we cannot enter into or sympathize 
with, in people imploring the storms to cease, or 
the sky to rain, or the sun to shine. I say there 
is nothing irrational in it, though perhaps it 
might be more accurate to say that there is nothing 
in it that would surprise anybody who is acquainted 
with the growth of human reason, or, at all events, of 
childish reason. It does not matter how we call the 
tendency of the childish mind to confound the mani- 
festation with that which manifests itself, effect with 
cause, act with agent. Call it Animism, Personifica- 
tion, Metaphor, or Poetry, we all know what is meant 
by it, in the most general sense of all these names; 
we all know that it exists, and the youngest child who 
beats the chair against which he has fallen, or who 
scplds his dog, or who sings, " Rain, rain, go to Spain," 
can teach us that, however irrational all this may 
seem to us, it is perfectly rational, natural, aye in- 
evitable in the first periods, or the childish age of the 
human mind. 

Now it is exactly this period in the growth of 
ancient religion, which was always presupposed, or 
postulated, but was absent everywhere else, that is 
clearly put before us in the hymns of the Rig-veda. 
It is this ancient chapter in the history of the human 
mind which has been preserved to us in Indian litera- 
ture, while we look for it in vain in Greece or Rome 
or elsewhere. 

It has been a favorite idea of those who call them* 
selves "students of man," or anthropologists, that in 
order to know the earliest or so-called prehistoric 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITER A TURE. 1 19 

phases in the growth of man, we should study the life 
of savage nations, as we may watch it still in some 
parts of Asia, Africa, Polynesia and America. 

There is much truth in this, and nothing can be 
more useful than the observations which we find col- 
lected in the works of such students as Waitz, Tylor, 
Lubbock, and many others. But let us be honest, 
and confess, first of all, that the materials on which 
we have here to depend are often extremely untrust- 
worthy. 

Nor is this all. What do we know of savage tribes 
beyond the last chapter of their history.-^ Do we 
ever get an insight into their antecedents t Can we 
understand, what after all is everywhere the most 
important and the most instructive lesson to learn, 
how they have come to be what they are t There is 
Indeed their language, and in it we see traces of 
growth that point to distant ages, quite as much as 
the Greek of Homer, or the Sanskrit of the Veda's. 
Their language proves indeed that these so-called 
heathens, with their complicated systems of mytho- 
logy, their artificial customs, their unintelligible 
whims and savageries, are not the creatures of to-day 
or yesterday. Unless we admit a special creation for 
these savages, they must be as old as the Hindus, 
the Greeks and Romans, as old as we ourselves. We 
may assume, of course, if we like, that their life has 
been stationary, and that they are to-day what the 
Hindus were no longer 3000 years ago. But that is 
a mere guess, and is contradicted by the facts of 
their language. They may have passed through 
ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as 
primitive may be, for all we know, a relapse into 



I30 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

savagery, or a corruption of something that was more 
rational and intelligible in former stages. Think 
only of the rules that determine marriage among the 
lowest of savage tribes. Their complication passes 
all understanding, all seems a chaos of prejudice, 
superstition, pride, vanity and stupidity. And yet we 
catch a glimpse here and there that there was some 
reason in most of that unreason ; we see how sense 
dwindled away into nonsense, custom into ceremony, 
ceremony into farce. Why then should this surface 
of savage life represent to us the lowest stratum of 
human life, the very beginnings of civilization, simply 
because we cannot dig beyond that surface ? 

Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do 
not claim for the ancient Indian literature any more 
than I should willingly concede to the fables and 
traditions and songs of savage nations, such as we can 
study at present in what we call a state of nature. 
Both are important documents to the students of the 
Science of Man. I simply say that in the Veda we 
have a nearer approach to a beginning, and an in- 
telligible beginning, than in the wild invocations of 
Hottentots or Bushmen, But when I speak of a be- 
ginning, I do not mean an absolute beginning, a 
beginning of all things. Again and again the question 
has been asked whether we could bring ourselves to 
believe that man, as soon as he could stand on his 
legs, instead of crawling on all fours, as he is sup- 
posed to have done, burst forth into singing Vedic 
hymns } But who has ever maintained this 1 Surely 
whoever has eyes to see can see in every Vedic 
hymn, aye, in every Vedic word? as many rings within 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKR/T LITER A TURE. 121 

rings as is in the oldest tree that was ever hewn 
down in the forest. 

I shall say even more, and I have said it before, 
namely, that supposing that the Vedic hymns were 
composed between 1500 and 1000 B. C, we can hardly 
understood how, at so early a date, the Indians had 
developed ideas which to us sound decidedly modern. 
I should give anything if I could escape from the 
conclusion that the collection of the Vedic Hymns, 
a collection in ten books, existed at least 1000 B. C, 
that is about 500 years before the rise of Buddhism, 
I do not mean to say that something may not be 
discovered hereafter to enable us to refer that col- 
lection to a later date. All I say is that, so far as 
we know at present, so far as all honest Sanskrit 
scholars know at present, we cannot well bring our 
pre-Buddhistic literature into narrower limits than 
five hundred years. 

What then is to be done ? We must simply keep 
our pre-conceived notions of what people call primi- 
tive humanity in abeyance for a time, and if we find 
that people three thousand years ago were familiar 
with ideas that seem novel and nineteenth-centuiy- 
like to us, well, we must somewhat modify our con- 
ceptions of the primitive savage, and remember that 
things hid from the wise and prudent have sometimes 
been revealed to babes. ...^^ 

I maintain then that for a study of man, or, if you 
like, for a study of Aryan humanity, there is nothing 
in the world equal in importance with the Veda, 
I maintain that to everybody who cares for himself, 
for his ancestors, for his history, or for his intellectual 
development, a study of Vedic literature is in indis- 



122 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US? 

pensable ; and that, as an element of liberal education, 
it is far more important and far more irhproving than 
the reigns of Babylonian and Persian kings, aye even 
than the dates and deeds of many of the kings of 
Judah and Israel. 

It is curious to observe the reluctance with which 
these facts are accepted, particularly by those to 
whom they ought to be most welcome, I mean the 
students of anthropology. Instead of devoting all 
their energy to the study of these documents, which 
have come upon us like a miracle, they seem only 
bent on inventing excuses why they need not be 
studied. Let it not be supposed that, because there 
are several translations of the Rig-veda in English, 
French and German, therefore all that the Veda can 
teach us has been learned. Far from it. Every one 
of these translations has been put forward as tentative 
only. I myself, though during the last thirty years I 
have given translations of a number of the more im- 
portant hymns, have only ventured to publish a speci- 
men of what I think a translation of the Veda ought 
to be ; and that translation, that traduction raisonnie 
as I ventured to call it, of twelve hymns or.iy, fills a 
whole volume. We are still on the mere surface of 
Vedic literature, and yet our critics are ready with 
ever so many arguments why the Veda can teach us 
nothing as to a primitive state of man. If they mean 
by primitive that which came absolutely first, then 
they ask for something which they will never get, not 
even if they discovered the private correspondence of 
Adam and Eve, or of the first Homo and Femina 
sapiens. We mean by primitive the earliest state of 
man of which, from the nature of the case, we can 



HUMAN INTEREST OF SANSKRIT LITERATURE. 



123 



hope to gain any knowledge ; and here, next to the 
archives hidden away in the secret drawers of language 
in the treasury of words common to, all the Aryan 
tribes, and in the radical elements of which each word 
is compounded, there is no literary relic more full of 
lessons to the true anthropologist, to the true student 
of mankind, than the Rig-veda. 



ii4 



®bjecti0U0. 



It may be quite true that controversy often does 
more harm than good, that it encourages the worst of 
all talents, that of plausibility, not to say dishonesty, 
and generally leaves the world at large worse con- 
founded than it was before. It has been said that no 
clever lawyer would shrink from taking a brief to prove 
that the earth forms the centre of the world, and, with 
all respect for English Juries, it is not impossible that 
even in our days he might gain a verdict against 
Galileo. Nor do I deny that there is a power and 
vitality in truth, which in the end overcomes and sur- 
vives all opposition, as shown by the very doctrine of 
Galileo which at present is held by hundreds and thou- 
sands who would find it extremely difficult to advance 
one single argument in its support. I am ready to 
admit also that those who have done the best work, 
and have contributed most largely toward the advance- 
ment of knowledge and the progress of truth, have 
seldom wasted their time in controversy, but have 
marched on straight, little concerned either about ap- 
plause on the right or abuse on the left. All this is 
true, perfectly true, and yet I feel that I cannot escape 
from devoting the whole of a lecture to the answering 
of certain objections which have been raised against the 
views which I have put forward with regard to the cha- 
racter and the historical importance of Vedic litera- 



OBJECTIONS. 125 

ture. We must not forget that the whole subject is 
new, the number of competent judges small, and 
mistakes not only possible, but almost inevitable. 
Besides, there are mistakes and mistakes, and the 
errors of able men are often instructive, nay one 
might say sometimes almost indispensable for the 
discovery of truth. There are criticisms which may 
be safely ignored, criticisms for the sake of criticism, 
if not inspired by meaner motives. But there are 
doubts and difficulties which suggest them.selves 
naturally, objections which have a right to be heard, 
and the very removal of which forms the best 
approach to the stronghold of truth. Nowhere has 
this principle been so fully recognized and been acted 
on as in Indian literature. Whatever subject is 
started, the rule is that the argument should begin 
with the purvapaksha, with all that can be said against 
a certain opinion. Every possible objection is wel- 
come, if only it is not altogether frivolous and absurd, 
and then only follows the uttarapaksha, with all that 
can be said against these objections and in support of 
the original opinion. Only when this process has been 
fully gone through is it allowed to represent an opin- 
ion as siddhanta, or established. 

Therefore, before opening the pages of the Veda, 
and giving you a description of the poetry, the reli- 
gion, and philosophy of the ancient inhabitants of 
India, I thought it right and necessary to establish, 
first of all, certain points without which it would be 
impossible to form a right appreciation of the histo- 
rical value of the Vedic hymns, and of their import- 
ance even to us who live at so great a distance from 
those early poets. 



126 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 1 

'Y\i^ first point was purely preliminary, namely that 
the Hindus in ancient, and in modern times also, are 
a nation deserving of our interest and sympathy, 
worthy also of our confidence, and by no means guilty 
of the charge so recklessly brought against them — the 
charge of an habitual disregard of truth. 

Secondly, that the ancient literature of India is not 
to be considered simply as a curiosity and to be 
handed over to the good pleasure of Oriental scholars, 
but that, both by its language, the Sanskrit, and by 
its most ancient literary documents, the Vedas, it 
can teach us lessons which nothing else can teach, as 
to the origin of our own language, the first formation 
of our own concepts, and the true natural germs of 
all that is comprehended under the name of civiliza- 
tion, at least the civilization of the Aryan race, that 
race to which we. and all the greatest nations of the 
world — the Hindus, the Persians, the Greeks and 
Romans, the Slaves, the Celts, and last, not least, the 
Teutons, belong. A man may be a good and useful 
ploughman without being a geologist, without know- 
ing the stratum on which he takes his stand, or the 
strata beneath that give support to the soil on 
which he lives and works, and from which he draws 
his nourishment. And a man may be a good and 
useful citizen, without being an historian, v/ithoul 
knowing how the world in which he lives came 
about, and how many phases mankind had to pass 
through in language, religion, and philosophy, before 
it could supply him with that intellectual soil on 
which he lives and works, and from which he draws 
his best nourishment. 

But there must always be an aristocracy of those 



OBJECTIONS. I2y 

who know, and who can trace back the best which 
we possess, not merely to a Norman Count, or a 
Scandinavian Viking, or a Saxon Earl, but to far 
older ancestors and benefactors, who thousands of 
years ago were toiling for us in the sweat of their 
face, and without whom we should never be what 
we are, — the ancestors of the whole Aryan race, 
the first framers of our words, the first poets of our 
thoughts, the first givers of our laws, the first pro- 
phets of our gods, and of Him who is God above 
all gods. 

That aristocracy of those who know, — di color che 
sanno, — or try to know, is open to all who are willing 
to enter, to all who have a feeling for the past, 
an interest in the genealogy of our thoughts, and a 
reverence for the ancestry of our intellect, who are in 
fact historians in the true sense of the word, i. e. in- 
quiries into that which is past, but not lost. 

Thirdly-, having explained to you why the ancient 
literature of India, the really ancient literature of 
that country, I mean that of the Vedic period, de- 
serves the careful attention, not of Oriental Scholars 
only, but of every educated man and woman who 
wishes to know how we, even we here in England 
and in this nineteenth century of ours, came to be 
what we are, I tried to explain to you the difference, 
and the natural and inevitable difference, between the 
development of the human character in such different 
climates as those of India and, Europe. And while 
admitting that the Hindus were deficient in many 
of those manly virtues and practical achievements 
which we value most, I wished to point out that 
there was another sphere of intellectual activity in 



1 23 WHA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? 

which the Hindus excelled-^the meditative and 
transcendent— and that here we might learn from 
them some lessons of life which we ourselves are but 
too apt to ignore or to despise. 

Fourthly, fearing that I might have raised too high 
expectations of the ancient wisdom, the religion and 
philosophy of the Vedic Indians, I felt it my duty to 
state that, though primitive in one sense, we must 
not expect the Vedic religion to be primitive in the 
anthropological sense of the word, as containing the 
utterances of beings who had just broken their shells, 
and were wonderingly looking out for the first time 
upon this strange world. The Veda may be called 
primitive, because there is no other literary document 
more primitive than it : but the language, the mytho- 
logy, the religion and philosophy that meet us m 
the Veda open vistas of the past which no one would 
venture to measure in years. Nay, they contain, by 
the side of simple, natural, childish thoughts, many 
ideas which to us sound modern, or secondary and 
tertiary, as I called them, but which nevertheless are 
older than any other literary document, and^ give 
us trustworthy information of a period in the history 
of human thought of which we knew absolutely 
nothing before the discovery of the Vedas.* 

But even thus our path is not yet clear. Other 
objections have been raised against the Veda as an 
historical document. Some of them are important ; 
and I have at times shared them myself. Others are 

*If we applied the name of literature to the cylinders of Babylon 
and the papyri of Egypt, we should have to admit that some of these 
documents are more ancient than any date we dare as yet assign to 
the hymns collected in the ten books of the Rig-veda, 



OBJECTIONS, 129 

at least instructive, and' will give us an opportunity 
of testing the foundation on which we stand. 

The first objection then against our treating the 
Veda as an historical document is that it is not truly 
national in its character, and does not represent the 
thoughts of the whole of the population of India, but 
only of a small minority, namely of the Brahmans, and 
not even of the whole class of Brahmans, but only of 
a small minority of them, namely of the professional 
priests. 

Objections should not be based on demands which, 
from the nature of the case, are unreasonable. Have 
those who maintain that the Vedic hymns do not re- 
present the whole of India, that is the whole of its 
ancient population, in the same manner as they say 
that the Bible represents the Jews or Homer the 
Greeks, considered what they are asking for.? So far 
from denying that the Vedic hymns represent only a 
small and, it may be, a priestly minority of the ancient 
population of India, the true historian would probably 
feel inclined to urge the same cautions against the Old 
Testament and the Homeric poems also. 

No doubt, after the books which compose the Old 
Testament had been collected as a Sacred Canon, they 
were known to the majority of the Jews. But when 
we speak of the primitive state of the Jews, of their 
moral, intellectual, and religious status while in Meso- 
potamia or Canaan or Egypt, we should find that the 
different books of the Old Testament teach us as little 
of the whole Jewish race, with all its local character- 
istics and social distinctions, as the Homeric poems do 
of all the Greek tribes, or the Vedic hymns of all the 
inhabitants of India. Surely, ev«n wh«ci we «p®ak of 



130 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US? 

the history of the Greeks or the Romans, we know that 
we shall not find there a complete picture of the social 
intellectual, and religious life of a whole nation. We 
know very little of the intellectual life of a whole nation, 
even during the Middle Ages, aye even at the present 
day. We may know something of the generals, of the 
commanders-inchief, but of the privates, of the millions, 
we know next to nothing. And what we do know 
of kings or generals or ministers is mostly no more 
than what was thought of them by a few Greek poets 
or Jewish prophets men who were one in a million 
among their contemporaries. 

But it might be said that though the writers were 
feAV, the readers were many. Is that so .'* I believe 
you would be surprised to hear how small the number 
of readers is even in modern times, while in ancient 
times reading was restricted to the very smallest class 
of privileged persons. There may have been listeners 
at public and private festivals, at sacrifices, and later 
on in theatres, but readers, in our sense of the word, 
are a very modern invention. 

There never has been so much reading, spread 
over so large an area, as in our times. But if 
you asked publishers as to the number of copies sold 
of books which are supposed to have been read by 
everybody, say Macaulay's History of England, the 
Life of the Prince Consort, or Darwin's Origin of 
Species, you would find that out of a population of 
thirty-two millions not one million has possessed itself 
of a copy of these works. The book which of late has 
probably had the largest sale is the Revised Version 
of the New Testament ; and yet the whole number of 
copies sold among the eighty millions of English-speak- 



OBJECTIONS, £31 

ing people is probably not more than four millions. 
Of ordinary books which are called books of the season, 
and which are supposed to have had a great success, 
an edition of three or four thousands copies is not con- 
sidered unsatisfactory by publishers or authors in Eng- 
land. But if you look to other countries such for 
instance as Russia, it would be very difficult indeed 
to. name books that could be considered as represent- 
ative of the whole nation, or as even known by more 
than a very small minority. 

And if we turn our thoughts back to the ancient 
nations of Greece and Italy, or of Persia and Baby- 
lonia, what book is there, with the exception perhaps 
of the Homeric poems, of which we could say that 
it had been read or even heard of by more than a 
few thousand people ? We think of Greeks and 
Romans as literary people, and so no doubt they were, 
but in a very different sense from what we mean by 
this. What we call Greeks and Romans are chiefly 
the citizens of Athens and Rome, and here again 
those who could produce or who could read such 
works as the Dialogues of Plato or the Epistles of 
Horace constituted a very small, intellectual aristo- 
cracy indeed. What we call history — the memory of 
the past — has always been the work of niinorities. 
Millions and millions pass away undeeded, and the 
few only to whom has been given the gift of fusing 
speech and thought into forms of beauty remain as 
witnesses of the past. 

If then we speak of times so distant as those repre- 
sented by the Rig-veda, and of a country so disin- 
tegrated, or ratiier as yet so little integrated as India 
was three thousand years ago, surely it requires 'but 



1 3 2 WHA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

little reflection to know that what we see in the Vedic 
poems are but a few snow-clad peaks, representing to 
us, from a far distance, the whole mountain-range of 
a nation, completely lost beyond the horizon of his- 
tory. When we speak of the Vedic hymns as re- 
presenting the religion, the thoughts and customs of 
India three thousand years ago, we cannot mean by 
India more than some unknown quantity of which 
the poets of the Veda are the only sjx)kesmen left. 
When we now speak of India, we think of 250 
millions, a sixth part of the whole human race, peo- 
pling the vast peninsula from the Himalayan moun- 
tains between the arms of the Indus and the Ganges, 
down to Cape Comorin and Ceylon, an extent of 
country nearly as large as Europe. In the Veda the 
stage on which the life of the ancient kings and poets 
is acted, is the valley of the Indus and the Punjab, 
as it is now called, the Sapta, Sindhasa//, the Seven 
Rivers of the Vedic poets. The land watered by the 
Ganges is hardly known, and the whole of the Dekkan 
seems not yet to have been discovered. 

Then again, when these Vedic hymns are called the 
lucubrations of a few priests, not the outpourings of 
the genius of a whole nation, what does that mean ? 
We may no doubt call these ancient Vedic poets 
priests, if we like, and no one would deny that their 
poetry is pervaded not only by religious, mytho- 
logical, and philosophical, but likewise by sacrificial 
and ceremonial conceits. Still a priest, if we trace 
him back far enough, is only 2i prsbytejvs or an elder, 
and, as such, those Vedic poets had a perfect right to 
speak in the name of a whole class, or of the village 
colnmunity to which they belonged. Call Vasish///a 



OBJECTIONS. 133 

a priest by all means, only do not let us imagine that 
he was therefore very like Cardinal Manning. 

After we have made every possible concession to 
arguments, most of which are purely hypothetical, 
there remains this great fact that here, in the Rig- 
veda, we have poems, composed in perfect language, 
in elaborate metre, telling us about gods and men, 
about sacrifices and battles, about the varying aspects 
of nature and the changing conditions of society, 
about duty and pleasure, philosophy and morality — • 
articulate voices reaching us from a distance from 
which we never heard before the faintest whisper ; 
and instead of thrilling with delight at this almost 
miraculous discovery, some critics stand aloof and 
can do nothing but find fault, because these songs do 
not represent to us primitive men exactly as they 
think they ought to have been ; not like Papuas or 
Bushmen, with arboraceous habits and half-animal 
clicks, not as worshipping stocks or stones, or be- 
lieving in fetishes, as according to Comte's inner 
consciousness they ought to have done, but rather, I 
must confess, as beings whom we can understand 
with whom to a certain extent we can sympathize, 
and to whom, in the historical progress of the human 
intellect, we may assign a place, not very far behind 
the ancient Jews and Greeks. 

Once more then, if we mean by primitive, people 
who inhabited this earth as soon as the vanishins: of 
the glacial period made this earth inhabitable, the 
Vedic poets were certainly not primitive. If we 
mean by primitive, people who were without a know- 
ledge of fire, who used unpolished flints, and ate raw 
flesh, the Vedic poets were not primitive. \i we 



J 2 4 JVIfA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US 1 

mean by primitive, people who did not cultivate the 
soil, had no fixed abodes, no kings, no sacrifices, no 
laws, again, I say, the Vedic poets were not primi- 
tive. But if we mean by primitive the people who 
have been the first of the Aryan race to leave behind 
literary relics of their existence on earth, then I say 
the Vedic poets are primitive, the Vedic language is 
primitive, the Vedic religion is primitive, and, taken 
as a whole, more primitive than anything else that 
we are ever likely to recover in the whole history of 
our race. 

When all these objections had failed, a last trump 
was played. The ancient Vedic poetry was said to be, 
if not of foreign origin, at least very much infected 
by foreign, and more particularly by Semitic influ- 
ences. It ' had always been urged by Sanskrit 
scholars as one of the chief attractions of Vedic lite- 
rature that it not only allowed us an insight into a 
very early phase of religious thought, but that the 
Vedic religion was the only one the development of 
which took place without any extraneous influences, 
and could be watched through a longer series of cen- 
turies than any other religion. Now with regard to 
the first point, we know how perplexing it is in the 
religion of ancient Rome to distinguish between 
Italian and Greek ingredients, to say nothing of 
Etruscan and Phoenician influences. We know the 
difficulty of finding out in the religion of the Greeks 
what is purely home-grown, and what is taken over 
from Egypt, Phoenicia, it may be from Scythia ; or at 
all events, slightly colored by those foreign rays of 
thought. Even in the religion of the Hebrews, Baby- 
lonian, Phoenician^ and at a later time Persian influ- 



OBJECTION^, - i^ 

eiices have been discovered, and the more we advance 
towards modern times, the more extensive becomes 
the mixture of thought, and the more difficult the 
task of assigning to each nation the share which i£ 
contributed to the common intellectual currency oi 
the world. In India alone, and more particularly in 
Vedic India, we see a plant entirely grown on native 
soil, and entirely nurtured by native air. For this 
reason, because the religion of the Veda was so com- 
pletely guarded from all strange infections, it is full 
of lessons which the student of religion could learn 
nowhere else. 

Now what have the critics of the Veda to say against 
this } They say that the Vedic poems show clear 
traces of Babylonian infl uences. 

I must enter into some details, because, small as 
they seem", you can see that they involve very wide 
consequences. 

There is one verse in the Rig-veda, VIII. 78, 2,* 
which has been translated as follows : " O Indra, 
bring to us a brilliant jewel, a cow, a horse, an orna- 
ment, together with a golden Mana."t 

Now what is a golden Mana } The word does not 

occur again by itself, either in the Veda or anywhere 

else, and it has been identified by Vedic scholars with 

the Latin minay the Greek /tr^^ the Phoenician ma7iah 

n.5^ % the well-known weight which we actually 

* A na/% bhara vya«^nam gam axvam abhya«oanam Sa/^a mana 
hirawyaya. 

t Grassman translates, " Zugleich mit goldenem Gearth ; " Ludwig, 
" Zusammt mit goldenem Zierrath ; " Zimmer, *' Und eine Mana gold." 
The Petersburg Dictionary explains mana by " ein bestimrates Gerath 
Oder Gewicht" (Gold). 

\ According to Dr. Haupt, Die Suraerisch-akkadische Sprachc, p. 
272, mana is an Accadian word. 



136 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us f 

possess now among the treasures brought from fia- 
bylon and Nineveh to the British Museum.* 

If this were so, it would be irrefragable evidence of 
at all events a commercial intercourse between Babv- 
Ion and India at a very early time, though it would in no 
way prove a real influence of Semitic on Indian thought. 
But is it so t If we translate saH, mana^ hira;^yaya by 
"with a mina of .gold," we must take mana hira«- 
yaya as instrumental cases. But saM never gov- 
erns an instrumental case. This translation there- 
fore is impossible, and although the passage is diffi- 
cult, because mana does not occur again in the Rig- 
veda, I should think we might take mana hira;2yaya 
for a dual, and translate, " Give us also two golden 
armlets." To suppose that the Vedic poets should 
have borrowed this one word and this one measure 
from the Babylonians, would be against all the rules 
of historical criticism. The word mana never occurs 
again in the whole of Sanskrit literature, no other Ba- 
bylonian weight occurs again in the whole of Sanskrit 
literature, and it is not likely that a poet who asks for 
a cow and a horse, would ask in the same breath for 
a foreign weight of gold, that is, for about sixty 
sovereigns. 

But this is not the only loan that India has been 
supposed to have negotiated in Babylon. The twenty- 
seven Nakshatras, or the twenty-seven constellations, 
which were chosen in India as a kind of lunar Zodiac, 
were supposed to have come from Babylon. Now 

* According to the weights of the lions and ducks preserved in the 
British Musuem, an Assryian mina was=»7,747 grains. The same 
difference is still preserved to the present day, as the man of Shiraz 
and Bagdad is just double that of Tabraz and Bushir, the average of 
the former being 14.0 and that of the latter only 6.985. See Cun- 
ningham, Journal of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1881, p. 163. 



OBJECTIOl^S. 137 

the Babylonian Zodiac was solar, and, in spite of re 
pealed researches, no trace of a lunar Zodiac has been 
found, where so many tilings have been found, in 
the cuneiform inscriptions. But supposing even that 
a lunar Zodiac had been discovered in Babylon, no 
one acquainted with Vedic literature and with the 
ancient Vedic ceremonial would easily allow himself 
to be persuaded that the Hindus had borrowed that 
simple division of the sky from the Babylonians. It 
is well known that most of the Vedic sacrifices depend 
on the moon, far more than on the sun.* As the 
Psalmist says, ' He appointed the moon for seasons ; 
the sun knoweth his going down,' we read in the Rig- 
veda X. 85, 18, in a verse addressed to sun and 
moon, ' They walk by their own power, one after the 
other (or from east to west), as playing children they 
go round the sacrifice. The one looks upon all the 
worlds, the other is born again and again, deter- 
mining the seasons. 

" He becomes new and new, when he is born ; as 
the herald of the days, he goes before the dawns. By 
his approach he determines their share for the gods, 
the moon increases a long life." 

The moon, then, determines the seasons, the //tus, 
the moon fixes the share, that is, the sacrificial obla- 
tion for all the gods. The seasons and the sacrifices 
were in fact so intimately connected together in the 
thoughts of the ancient Hindus, that one of the com- 
monest names for priest was ntv-i^, literally, the 
season-sacrificer. 

Besides the rites which have to be performed every 
day, such as the fiv« Mahiya^^as, and the Agnih©trft 

* Preface to the fourth volume of my edition of the Rig- Veda, p. li. 



138 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US? ' 

in the morning and the evening, the important sacri- 
fices in Vedic times were the Full and New-moon 
sacrifices (dar^ap<ir;2amasa) ; the Season-sacrifices (/^a- 
turmdsya), each season consisting of four months ; * 
and the Half-yearly sacrifices, at the two solstices. 
There are other sacrifices (agraya/^a, etc.) to be per- 
formed in autum and summer, others in winter and 
spring, whenever rice and barley are ripen ing.f 

The regulation of the seasons, as one of the funda- 
mental conditions of an incipient society, seems in 
fact to have been so intimately connected with the 
worship of the gods, as the guardians of the seasons 
and the protectors of law and order, that it is some- 
times difficult to say whether in their stated sacrifices 
the maintenance of the calendar or the maintenance 
of the worship of the gods was more prominent in the 
minds of the old Vedic priests. 

The twenty-seven Nakshatras then were clearly 
suggested by the moon's passage.^ Nothing was 
more natural for the sake of counting days, months, 
or seasons than to observe the twenty-seven places 
which the moon occupied in her passage from any 
point of the sky back to the same point. It was far 
easier than to determine the sun's position either 
from day to day, or from month to month ; for the 
stars, being hardly visible at the actual rising and 
setting of the sun, the idea of the sun's conjunction 
with certain stars could not suggest itself to a listless 
observer. The moon, on the contrary, progressing 

'^ Valrvadevara on th« full-moon of Phalguna, Varu;?apragh§,sl^ on 
the full-moon cA Asha^/Sa, SS/kamedhS«/^ on the fuli-moon of Kr/ttika; 
s^ Baehtlingk, Dictionary, 3. v. 

tS©e Vish^/u-sm;^'ti, sd. Jolly LIX. 4; Aryabhafe, Introduction. 

t See Preface to vol. iv. of Rig-veda, p. li. (1S62). 



OBJECTIONS. 139 

from night to night, and coming successively in con- 
tact with certain stars, was like the finger of a clock, 
moving round a circle, and coming in contact with 
one figure after another on the dial plate of the sky. 
Nor would the portion of about one-third of a 
lunation in addition to the twenty-seven stars from 
new moon to new moon, create much confusion in 
the minds of the rough-and-ready reckoners of those 
early times. All they were concerned with were the 
twenty-seven celestial stations which, after being 
only traced out by the moon, were fixed, like so 
many mile-stones, for determining the course of all 
the celestial travellers that could be of any interest 
for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years. 
A circle divided into twenty-seven sections, or any 
twenty-seven poles planted in a circle at equal dis- 
tances round a house, would answer the purpose of a 
primitive Vedic observatory. All that was wanted 
to be known was between which pair of poles the 
moon, or afterwards the sun also, was visible at their 
rising or setting, the observer occupying the same 
central position on every day. 

Our notions of astronomy cannot in fact be too crude 
and too imperfect if we wish to understand the first 
beginnings in the reckoning of days and seasons and 
years. We cannot expect in those days more than 
what any shepherd would know at present of the sun 
and moon, and stars and seasons. Nor can we expect 
any observations of heavenly phenomena unless they 
had some bearing on the practical wants of primitive 
society. 

If then w@ can watch in India the natural, nay 
inevitable, growth of the division of the heaven into 



1 40 JVHA T CAN INDIA l^EACII US f 

twenty-seven equal divisions, each division marked 
by stars, which may have been observed and named 
long before they were used for this new purpose — if, 
on the other hand, we could hardly understand the 
grpwth and development of the Indian ceremonial 
except as determined by a knowledge of the lunar 
asterisms, the lunar months, and the lunar seasons, 
surely it would be a senseless hypothesis to ima- 
gine that the Vedic shepherds or priests went to 
Babylonia in search of a knowledge which every 
shepherd might have acquired on the banks of the 
Indus, and that, after their return from that country 
only, where a language was spoken which no Hindu 
could understand, they set to work to compose their 
sacred hymns, and arrange their simple ceremonial. 
We must never forget that what is natural in one 
place is natural in other places also, and we may 
sum up without fear of serious contradiction, that no 
case has been made out in favor of a foreign origin 
of the elementary astronomical notions of the Hindus 
as found or presupposed in the Vedic hymns. * 

The Arabs, as is well known, have twenty-eight 
lunar stations, the Manzil, and I can see no reason why 
Mohammed and his Bedouins in the desert should 
not have made the same observation as the Vedic 
poets in India, though I must admit at the same 
time that Colebrooke has brought forward very 
cogent arguments to prove that, in their scientific 
employment at least, the Arabic Manzil were really 
borrowed from an Indian source, f 

The Chinese, too, have their famous lunar stations, 

*See Zimmer, Altindisofees L«ben, pp. 352—357 
* t L. c. p.lxx. 



b^jEcrioks. 141 

the S eUy originally twenty-four in number, and after- 
wards raised to twenty-eight. * But here again there 
is no necessity whatever for admitting, with Biot, 
Lassen and others, that the Hindus went to China 
to gain their simplest elementary notions of lunar 
chrononomy. First of all, the Chinese began with 
twenty-four, and raised them to twenty-eight ; the 
Hindus began with twenty-seven, and raised them to 
twenty-eight. Secondly, out of these twenty-eight 
asterisms, there are seventeen only which can really be 
identified with the Hindu stars (taras). Now if a scien- 
tific system is borrowed, it is borrowed complete. 
But, in our case, I see really no possible channel 
through which Chinese astronomical knowledge could 
jhave been conducted to India so early as 1000 before 
our era. In Chinese literature India is never men- 
tioned before the middle of the second century before 
Christ ; and if the isTinas in the later Sanskrit litera- 
ture are meant for Chinese, which is doubtful, it is 
important to observe that that name never occurs in 
Vedic literature. 

* L. c p. xlvii. 

t In the Mahabharata and elsewhere the i^inas are mentioned 
among the Dasyus or non- Aryan races in the North and in the East 
of India. King Bhagadatta is said to have had an army of A*inas 
and Kiratas,^ and the Pa;z^avas are said to reach the town of the 
King of the Kulindas, after having passed through the countries of 
Alnas, Tukharas, and Daradas. All this is as vague as ethnological 
indications generally are in the late epic poetry of India. The only 
possibly real element is that Kirata and K\x\.z. soldiers are called 
kawiana, gold or yellow colored,^ and compared to a forest of Kar«i- 
karas, which were trees with yellow flowers.* In Mahabh. VI. 9, v. 



^ Lassen, i. p. 1029; Mahabh. III. 117, v. 12350; vol. i. p. 619. 

2 Mahabh. V. 18, v. 584 ; vol. ii. p. 106. 

2 See Vaiaspatya s. v. ; Kaj/^it Karwikragaura^. 



i42 What CAN INDIA teach us f 

When therefore the impossibility of so early 1 
communication between China and India had at last 
been recognized, a new theory was formed, namely 
" that the knowledge of Chinese astronomy was not 
imported straight from China to India, but was 
carried, together with the Chinese system of division 
of the heavens into twenty-eight mansions, into 
Western Asia, at a period not much later than iioo 
B. c, and was then adopted by some Western people, 
either Semitic or Iranian. In their hands it was 
supposed to have received a new form, such as adapted 
it to a ruder and less scientific method of observation, 
the limiting stars of the mansions being, converted 
into zodiacal groups or constellatibus, and in some 
instances altered in position, so as to be brought 
nearer to the general planetary path of the ecliptic. 
In this changed form, having become a means of 
roughly determining and describing the places and 
movements of the planets, it was believed to have 
passed into the keeping of the Hindus,^very probably 
along with the first knowledge of the planets them- 
selves, and entered upon an independent career of 
history in India. It still maintained itself in its old 

373, vol. ii. p. 344, the ^inas occur in company with Kambo^as and 
Yavanas, which again conveys nothing definite* 

Chinese scholars tell us that the name of China is of modern origin, 
and only dates from the Thsin dynasty or from the famous Emperor 
Shi-hoang-ti, 247 B. C. But the name itself, though in a more 
restricted sense, occurs in earlier documents, and may, as Lassen 
thinks,* have become known to the Western neighbors of China. It 
is certainly strange that the Sinim too, mentioned in Isaiah xlix. 12, 
have been taken by the old commentators for people of China, visit- 
ing Babylon as merchants and travellers. 



* Lassen, vol. i. p. 1029, n. 2. 



dBjECTIONS. 14^ 

seat, leaving its traces later in the Bundahash ; and 
made its way so far westward as finally to become 
known and adopted by the Arabs." With due respect 
for the astronomical knowledge of those who hold this 
view, all I can say is that this is a novel, and nothing 
but a novel, without any facts to support it, and that 
the few facts which are known to us do not enable a 
careful reasoner to go beyond the conclusions stated 
many years ago by Colebrooke, that the ** Hindus had 
undoubtedly made some progress at an early period in 
the astronomy cultivated by them for the regulation 
of time. Their calendar, both civil and religious, was 
governed chiefly, not exclusively, by the moon and 
the sun : and the motions of these luminaries were 
caiefully observed by them, and with such success, 
that their determination of the moon's svnodical re- 
volution, which was what they were principally con- 
cerned with, is a much more correct one than the 
Greeks ever achieved. They had a division of the 
ecliptic into twenty-seven and twenty-eight parts, 
suggested evidently by the moon's period in days, and 
seemingly their own ; it was certainly borrowed by the 
Arabians." 

There is one more argument which has been adduced 
in support of a Babylonian, or, at all events, a Semitic 
influence to be discovered in Vedic literature which 
we must shortly examine. It refers to the story of 
the Deluge. 

That story, as you know, has been traced in the 
traditions of many races, which could not well have 
borrowed it from one another ; and it was rather a 
surprise that no allusion even to a local deluge should 
occur in any of the Vedic hymns, particularly as very 



i44 WirAr CAN INDIA TEACil VSi 

elaborate accounts of different kinds of deluges are 
found in the later Epic poems, and in the still later 
Pura;/as, and form in fact a very familiar subject in 
the religious traditions of the people of India. 

Three of the Avatdras or incarnations of Vish;m 
are connected with a deluge, that of the Fish, that of 
the Tortoise, and that of the Boar, Vish;m in each case 
rescuing mankind from destruction by water, by as- 
suming the form of a fish, or a tortoise, or a boar. 

This being so, it seemed a very natural conclusion 
to make that, as there was no mention of a deluge in 
the most ancient literature of India, that legend had 
penetrated into India from without at a later time. 

When, however, the Vedic literature became more 
generally known, stories of a deluge were discovered, 
if not in the hymns, at least in the prose writings, be- 
longing to the second period, commonly called the 
Brahma;^ period. Not only the story of Manu and 
the Fish, but the stories of the Tortoise and of the 
Boar also, were met with there in a more or less com- 
plete form, and with this discovery the idea *of a 
foreign importation lost much of its plausibility. I 
shall read you at least one .of these accounts of a 
Deluge which is found in the 5atapatha Brahma/^a, 
and you can then judge for yourselves whether the 
similarities between it and the account in Genesis are 
really such as to require, nay as to admit, the hypo- 
thesis that the Hindus borrowed their account of the 
Deluge from their nearest Semitic neighbors. 

We read in the ^'atapatha Brahma;/a I. 8, i : 

" In the morning they brought water to Manu for 
washing, as they bring it even now for washing our 
hands. 



OBJECTIONS. .145 

** While he was thus washing, a fish came into his 
hands. 

" 2. The fish spoke this word to Manu : " Keep me, 
and I shall save thee." 

" Manu said : * From what wilt thou save me .^' 

" The fish said : " A flood will carry away all these 
creatures, and I shall save thee from it." 

" Manu said : " How canst thou be kept ? " 

" 3. The fish said : " So long as we are small, there 
is much destruction for us, for fish swallows fish. 
Keep me therefore first in a jar. When I outgrow 
that, dig a hole and keep me in it. When I outgrow 
that, take me to the sea, and I shall then be beyond 
the reach of destruction." 

" 4. He became soon a large fish (^/^asha), for such 
a fish grows largest. The fish said : " In such and 
such a year the flood will come. Therefore when 
thou hast built a ship, thou shalt meditate on me. 
And when the flood has risen, thou shalt enter into 
the ship, and I will save thee from the flood." 

'' 5. Having thus kept the fish, Manu took him to 
the sea. Then in the same year which the fish had 
pointed out, Manu, having built the ship, meditated 
on the fish. And when the flood had risen, Manu 
entered into the ship. Then the fish swam towards 
him, and Manu fastened the rope of the ship to the 
fish's horn, and he thus hastened towards * the 
Northern Mountain. 

" 6. The fish said : " I have saved thee ; bind the 
ship to a tree. May the water not cut thee off, while 

* I prefer now tih« reading of the Kl/«va-^k!ifej abljidudrSiva. 
Instead of atidudrava or adhidudr^va of the other MSS. See 
Weber, Ind. Streifen, i. p. 11. 



1 46 IVIIA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? 

thou art on the mountain. As the water subsides 
do thou gradually slide down with it." Manu then 
slid down gradually with the water, and therefore 
this is called '' the Slope of Manu " on the Northern 
Mountain. Now the flood had carried away all these 
creatures, and thus Manu was left there alone. 

" 7. Then Manu went about singing praises and 
toiling, wishing for offspring. And he sacrificed 
there also with a Paka-sacrifice. He poured clarified 
butter, thickened milk, whey, and curds in the water 
as a libation. In one year a woman arose from it. 
She came forth as if dripping, and clarified butter 
gathered on her step. Mitia and Varu;/a came to 
meet her. 

" 8. They said to her : " Who art thou .? " She said : 
"The daughter of Manu." They rejoined: "Say 
that thou art ours." " No," she said, " he who has 
begotten me, his I am." 

" Then they wished her to be their sister, and she 
half agreed and half did not agree, but went away, 
and came to Manu. 

" 9. Manu said to her : " Who art thou } " She said : 
" I am thy daughter," " How, lady, art thou my 
daughter .? " he asked. 

" She replied ; " The libations which thou hast 
poured into the water, clarified butter, thickened milk, 
whey and curds, by them thou hast begotten me. I 
am a benediction — perform (me) this benediction at 
the sacrifices. If thou perform (me) it at the sacri- 
fice, thou wilt be rich in offspring and cattle. And 
whatever blessing thou wilt ask by me, will always 
accrue to thee." He therefore performed that bene- 
diction in the middle of the sacrifice, for. the middle 



OBJECTIONS, 14^ 

of the sacrifice is that which comes between the in- 
troductory and the final offerings. 

" 10. Then Manu went about with her, singing 
praises and toiling, wishing for offspring. And with 
her he begat that offspring which is called the off- 
spring of Manu ; and whatever blessing he asked 
with her, always accrued to him. She is indeed I<^a 
and whosoever, knowing this, goes about (sacrifices) 
with \dky begets the same offspring which Manu 
begat, and whatever blessing he asks with her, always 
accrues to him." 

This, no doubt, is the account of a deluge, and 
Manu acts in some respects the same part which is 
assigned to Noah in the Old Testament. But if 
there are similarities, think of the dissimilarities, 
and how they are to be explained. It is quite 
clear that, if this story was borrowed from a Semitic 
source, it was not borrowed from the Old Testament, 
for in that case it would really seem impossible to 
account for the differences between the two stories. 
That it may have been borrowed from some un- 
known Semitic source cannot, of course, be dis- 
proved, because no tangible proof has ever been pro- 
duced that would admit of being disproved. But if 
it were, it would be the only Semitic loan in ancient 
Sanskrit literature — and that alone ought to make us 
pause ! 

The story of the boar and the tortoise too, can . be 
traced back to the Vedic literature. For we read in 
the Taittiriya Sawhita :* 

'•' At first this was water, fluid. Pra/apati, the lord 
of creatures,' having become wind, moved on it.' He 

♦VII. I, 5, I seq.; Muir. i. p. p.\ Colebrooke, Essays, i. 75. 



1 43 WIIA T CAN INDIA TEA CII US f 

saw this earth, and becoming a boar, he took it up. 
Becoming Vii'vakarman, the maker of all things, he 
cleaned it. It spread and became the wide-spread 
Earth, and this is why the Earth is called Pnthivi the 
wide-spread." 

And we find in the 5atapatha Brahma;^at the fol- 
lowing slight: allusion at least to the tortoise myth : 

" Pra^apati, assuming the form of a tortoise (Kur- 
ma), brought forth all creatures. In so far as he 
brought them forth, he made them (akarot), and be- 
cause he made them he was (called) tortoise (Kurma). 
A tortoise is (called Ka.fyapa, and therefore all crea- 
tures are called Ka^yapa, tortoise like. He who was 
this tortoise (Kurma) was really Aditya, (the sun)." 

One other allusion to something like a deluge,$ im- 
portant chiefly on account of the name of Manu 
occurring in it, has been pointed out in the Ka///aka 
(XL 2), where this short sentence occurs : " The waters 
cleaned this, Manu alone remained." 

All this shows that ideas of a deluge, that is, of a 
submersion of the earth by water and of its rescue 
through divine aid, were not altogether unknown in 
the early traditions of India, while in later times they 
were embodied in several of the Avataras of Vish;m. 

When we examine the numerous accounts of a 
deluge among different nations in almost every part 
of the world, we can easily perceive that they do not 
refer to one single historical event, but to a natural 
phenomenon repeated every year, namely the deluge 
or flood of the rainy season or the winter.§ 

t ,VII. 5, I, 5; Muir, Origmal Sanskrit Texts, I, p. 54. 

I Weber, Indische Streifen, i. p. 11. § See Lecture V,p. 152. 



OBJECTIONS. 149 

This is nowhere clearer than in Babylon. Sir 
Henry Rawlinson was the first to point out that 
the twelve cantos of the poem of Izdubar or Nirarod 
refers to the twelve months of the year and the 
twelve representative signs of the Zodiac. Dr. 
Haupt afterwards pointed out that Eabani, the wise 
bull-man in the second canto, corresponds to the 
second month, Ijjar, April-May, represented in the 
Zodiac by the bull; that the union between Eabant 
and Nimrod in the third canto corresponds to the 
third mouth, Sivan, May -June represented in the 
Zodiac by the twins ; that the sickness of Nimrod 
in the seventh canto corresponds to the seventh 
month, Tishri, September- October, when the sun 
begins to wane ; and that the flood in the eleventh 
canto corresponds to the eleventh month, Shaba/u, 
dedicated to the storm-god Rimmon, represented in 
the Zodiac by the waterm.an.* 

If that is so, we have surely a right to claim the 
same natural origin for the story of the Deluge in In- 
dia which we are bound to admit in other countries. 
And even if it could be proved that in the form in 
which these legends have reached us in India they 
show traces of foreign influences,! the fact would still 
remain that such influences have been perceived in 
comparatively modern treatises only, and not in the 
ancient hymns of the Rig-veda. 

Other conjectures have been made with even less 
foundation than that which would place the ancient 
poets of India under the influence of Babylon. China 
has been appealed to, nay even Perisa, Parthia, and 

*See Haupt, Der KeilinschriftHche Sintfluthbericht, 1881, p.io. 
t See M. M., Genesis and Avesta (German translation;, i. p. 148. 



i^O ^VHAT CAN INDIA TEACH VS / 

Bactria, countries beyond the reach of India at thai 
early time of which we are here speaking, and por- 
bably not even then consolidated into independent 
nations or kingdoms. I only wonder that traces of 
the lost Jewish tribes have not been discovered in 
the Vedas, considering that Afghanistan has so often 
been pointed out as one of their favorite retreats. 

After having thus carefully exmined all the traces* 
of supposed foreign influences that have been brought 
forward by various scholars, I think I may say that 
there really is no trace whatever of any foreign influ- 
ence in the language, the religion, or the ceremonial 
of the ancient Vedic literature of India. As it stands 
before us now, so it has grown up, protected by the 
mountain ramparts in the North, the Indus and the 
Desert in the West, the Indus or what was called 
the sea in the South, and the Ganges in the East. 
It presents us with a home-grown poetry, and a 
holne-grown religion ; and history has preserved tc 
us at least this one relic, in order to teach us what 
the human mind can achieve if left to itself, sur- 
rounded by a scenery and by conditions of life that 
might have made man's life on earth a paradise, if 
man did not possess the strange art of turning even 
a paradise into a place of misery. 



^\)t Ce00ons0ft()e beba* 



Although there is hardly any department of 
learning which has not received new light and new 
life from the ancient literature of India, yet nowhere 
is the light that comes to us from India so important, 
so novel, and so rich as in the study of religion and 
mythology. It is to this subject therefore that I 
mean to devote the remaining lectures of this course. 
I do so, partly because I feel myself most at home in 
that ancient world of Vedic literature in which the 
germs of Aryan religion have to be studied, partly 
because I believe that for a proper understanding of 
the deepest convictions, or if you like, the strongest 
prejudices of the modern Hindu, nothing is so useful 
as a knowledge of the Veda. It is perfectly true that 
nothing would give a falser impression of the actual 
Brahmanical religion than the ancient Vedic litera- 
ture, supposing we were to imagine that three 
thousand years could have passed over India without 
producing any change. Such a mistake would be 
nearly as absurd as to deny any difference between 
the Vedic Sanskrit and the spoken Bengali. ,But 
no one will gain a scholarlike knowledge or a true 
insight into the secret springs of Bengali who is ig- 
norant of the grammar of Sanskrit ; and no one will 
^ver understand the present religious, philosphical, 



1 5 3 IV//A T CAN INDIA TEA CH US 1 

legal, and social opinions of the Hindus who is unable 
to trace them back to their true sources in the Veda. 

I still remember how, many years ago, when I 
began to publish for the first time the text and the 
commentary of the Rig-veda, it 'was argued by a 
certain, perhaps not quite disinterested party, that 
the Veda was perfectly useless, that no Man in India, 
however learned, could read it, and that it was of no 
use either for missionaries or for any one else who 
wished to study and to influence the native mind. 
It was said that we ought to study the later San- 
skrit, the Laws of Manu, the epic poems, and, more 
particulalarly, the Pura;^as. The Veda might do very 
well for German students, but not for Englishmen. 

There was no excuse for such ignorant assertions 
even thirty years ago, for in these very books, in the 
Laws of Manu, in the Mahabharata, and in the 
Pura;^as, the Veda is everywhere proclaimed as the 
highest authority in all matters of religion.* " A Brah- 
man." says Manu, " unlearned in holy writ, is ex- 
tinguished in an instant like dry grass on fire." 
'' A twice-born man (that is a Brahama^^a a Kshatriya 
anda Vaii-ya) not having studied the Veda, soon 
falls, even when living, to the condition of a 5udra, 
and his descendants after him." 

How far this license of ignorant assertion may be 
carried is shown by the same authorities who denied 
the importance of the Veda for a historical study of 
Indian thought, boldly charging those wily priests, 
the Brahmans, with having withheld their sacred 
literature from any but their own caste. Now so far 
from witholding it, the Brahmans have always been 
* Wilson, Lectures, p. 9, 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA, 153 

Striving, and often striving in vain, to make the 
study of their sacred literature obligatory on all 
castes, except the 5udras, and the passages just 
quoted from Manu show what penalties were threat- 
ened, if children of the second and third castes, the 
Kshatriyas and Vaii-yas, were not instructed in the 
sacred literature of the Brahmans. 

At present the Brahmans themselves have spoken, 
and the reception they have accorded to ray edition 
of the Rig-veda* and its native commentary, the zeal 
with which they have themselves taken up the study 
of -Vedic literature, and the earnestness with which 
different sects are still discussing the proper use that 
should be made of their ancient religious writings, 
show abundantly that a Sanskrit scholar ignorant of, 
or, I should rather say, determined to ignore the 
Veda, would be not much better than a Hebrew 
scholar ignorant of the Old Testament. 

I shall now proceed to give you some characteristic 
specimens of the religion and poetry of the Rig- 
veda. They can only be few, and as there is 
nothing hke system or unity of plan in that collec- 

* As it has been doubted, and even denied, that the publication of 
the Rig-veda and its native commentary has had some important bear- 
ing on the resuscitation of the religious life of India, I feel bound to 
give at least one from the many testimonials which I have received 
from India. It comes from the Adi Brahma Samaj, founded by Ram 
Mohun Roy, and now represented by its three branches, the Adi 
Brahma Samaj, the Brahma Samaj of India, and the Sadharano 
Brahma Samaj. " The Committee of the Adi Brahma Samaj beg to 
offer you their hearty congratulations on the completion of the gigan- 
tic task which has occupied you for the last quarter of a century. By 
publishing the Rig- Veda at a time when Vedic learning has by some 
sad fatality become almost extinct in the land of its birth, you havt 
conferred a boon upon us Hindus, f©r which we cannot but ]»e *t«r- 
naliy grat»£ul.'' 



154 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US "^ 

tion of 1017 hymns, which we call the Saz/^hita of 
the Rig-veda, I cannot promise that they will give 
you a complete panoramic view of that intellectual 
world in which our Vedic ancestors passed their life 
on earth. 

I could not even answer the question, if you were 
to ask it, whether the religion of. the Veda was poly- 
theistic, or monotheistic. Monotheistic, in the usual 
sense of that word, it is decidedly not, though there 
are hymns that assert the unity of the Divine as fear- 
lessly as any passage of the Old Testament, or the 
New Testament, or the Koran. Thus one poet says 
(Rig-veda I. 164,46) : " That which is ^;2^, sages name it 
in various ways — they call it Agni, Yama, Matarii-van." 

Another poet says : " The wise poets represent by 
their words Him who is one with beautiful wings, 
in many ways,"* 

And again we hear of a being called Hira;/ya- 
garbha, the golden germ (whatever the original of 
that name may have been), of whom the poet says : f 
" In the beginning there arose Hira/^yagarbha ; he 
was the one born lord of aH this. He established 
the earth and this sky. Who is the god to whom 
we shall offer our sacrifice 1 " That Hira/^yagarbha, 
the poet says, " is alone God above all gods '' (ya// 
deveshu adhi deva>^ eka/^ asit) — an assertion of the 
unity of the Divine which could hardly be exceeded 
in strength by any passage from the Old Testament. 

But by the side of such passages, which are few 
in number, there are thousands in which ever so 
many divine beings are praised and prayed to. Even 
their number is sometimes given as " thrice eleven " % 

* Rig-veda X. 114. 5. f Rig-veda X. 121. % Muir, iv.9. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 155 

or thirty-three, and one poet assigns eleven gods 
to the sky, eleven to the earth, and eleven to the 
waters,* the waters here intended being those of the 
atmosphere and the clouds. These thirty-three gods 
have even wives apportioned to them,f though few 
of these only have as yet attained to the honor of 

a name. J 

These thirty-three gods, however, by no means 
include all the Vedic gods, for such important deities 
as Agni, the fire, Soma, the rain, the Maruts or Storm- 
gods, the Ai-vins, the gods of Morning and Evening, 
the Waters, the Dawn, the Sun are mentioned sepa- 
rately ; and there are not wanting passages in which 
the poet is carried away into exaggerations, till he 
proclaims^ the number of his gods to be, not only 
thirty-three, but three thousand three hundred and 
thirty-nine. § 

If therefore there must be a name for the religion 
of the Rig-veda, polytheism would seem at first sight 
the most appropriate. Polytheism, however, has as- 
sumed with us a meaning which renders it totally 
inapplicable to the Vedic religion. 

Our ideas of polytheism being chiefly derived from 
Greece and Rome, we understand by it a certain more 
or less organized system of gods, different in power 
and rank, and all subordinate to a supreme God, a 

* Rig-veda I. 139, ii. t Rig- Veda III. 6, 9. 

' X The following names of Devapatnis or wives of the gods are 
given in the Vaitana Sutra XV. 3 (ed. Garbe) : Pr/thivi, the wife 
of Agni, Ykk of Vata, Sena of Indra, Dhena of Br/haspati, Pathya 
of Pushan, G^yatri of Vasu, Trish/ubh of Rudra, 6^agati of Aditya, 
Anush^ubh of Mitra, Vira^ of Varu«a, Pankti of Vishnu, Diksha of 
Soma. 

§ Rig-veda III. 9, 9. 



. i%6 W-HA T CAjV INDIA TEACH US ? 

Zeus of Jupiter. The Vedic polytheism differs from 
the Greek and Roman polytheism, and, I may add, 
likewise from the polytheism of the Ural-Altaic, the 
Polynesian, the American, and most of the African 
races, in the same manner as a confederacy of village 
communities differs from a monarchy. There are 
traces of an earlier stage of village-community life 
to be discovered in the later republican and monar- 
chical constitutions, and in the same manner nothing 
can be clearer, particularly in Greece, than that the 
monarchy of Zeus was preceded by what may be 
called the septarchy of several of the great gods of 
Greece. The same remark applies to the mythology 
of the Teutonic nations also.* In the Veda, however, 
the gods worshipped as supreme by each sept stand 
still side by side. No one is first always, no one is 
last always. Even gods of a decidedly inferior and 
limited character assume occasionally in the eyes 
of a devoted poet a supreme place above all other 
gods.f It was necessary, therefore, for the purpose 
of accurate reasoning to have a name, different from 
polytheism^ to signify this worship of single gods, each 
occupying for a time a supreme position, and I pro- 

* Grimm showed that Th6rr is sometimes the supreme god, while 
at other times he is the son of Odimi. This, as Professor Zimmer 
tiuly remarks, need not be regarded as the result of a revolution, or 
even of gradual decay, as in the case of Dyaus and Tyr, but simply as 
inherent in the character of a nascent polytheism. See Zeitschrift 
fiir D. A., vol. xii. p. 174. 

t '* Among not yet civilized races prayers are addressed to a god 
with a special object, and to that god who is supposed to be most 
powerful in a special domain. He becomes for tte moment the 
highest god to whom all others must give place. He may be in* 
invoked as the highest and the only god, without any slight liting 
intended f«r the other gods." Zimmer, 1. c, p. 175. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 



157 



posed for it the name of Kathenotheism, that is a 
worship of one god after another, or of Henotkeism, 
the worship of single gods. This shorter name of 
Henotheism has found more general acceptance, as 
conveying more definitely the opposition between 
Monotheism, the worship of one only God, and He^to- 
theism, the worship of single gods ; and, if but 
properly defined, it- will answer its purpose very 
well. However, in researches of this kind we can^ 
not be too much on our guard against technical 
terms. Th'ey are inevitable, I know; but they are 
almost always misleading. There is, for instance, 
a hymn addressed to the Indus and the rivers that 
fall into it, of which I hope to read you a transla- 
tion, because it determines very accurately the geo- 
graphical scene on which the poets of the Veda passed 
their life. Now native scholars call these rivers d e- 
vatas or deities, and European translators too speak 
of them as gods and goddesses. But in the language 
used by the poets with regard to the Indus and the 
other rivers, there is nothing to justify us in saying 
that he considered these rivers as gods ^.m^ goddesses, 
unless we mean by gods and goddesses something very 
different from what the Greeks called River-gods and 
River-goddesses, Nymphs, Najades, or even Muses. 

And what applies to these rivers, applies more or 
less to all the objects of Vedic worship. They all are 
still oscillating between what is seen by the senses, 
what is created by fancy, and what is postulated by the 
understanding; they are things, persons, causes, ac- 
cording to the varying disposition of the poets : and 
if we call them gods or goddesses, we must remember 
the remark of an ancient native theologian^ who re^ 



158 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

minds us that by de vatd or deity he means no more 
than the object celebrated in a hymn, while i?/shi or 
seer means no more than the subject or the author 
of a hymn. 

It is difficult to treat of the so-called gods cele- 
brated in the Veda according to any system, for the 
simple reason that the concepts of these gods and the 
hymns addressed to them sprang up spontaneously 
and without any pre-established plan. It is best 
perhaps for our purpose to follow an ancient Brah- 
manical writer, who is supposed to have lived about 
400 B.C. He tells us of the students of the Veda, before 
his time, who admitted three deities only, viz. Agni 
or fire, whose place is on the earth ; V a y u or I n d r a, 
the wind and the god of the thunderstorm, v.-hose 
place is in the air ; and S u r y a, the sun, whose place 
is in the sky. These deities, they maintained, re- 
ceived severally many appellations, in consequence 
of their greatness, or of the diversity of their functions, 
just as a priest, according to the functions which he 
performs at various sacriiices, receives various names. 

This is one view of the Vedic gods, and though too 
narrow, it cannot be denied that there is some truth 
in it. A very useful division of the Vedic gods 
might be made, and has been made by Yaska, into 
terrestrial^ aerial^ and celestial, and if the old Hindu 
theologians meant no more than that all the mani- 
festations of divine power in nature might be traced 
back to three centres of force, one in the sky, one in 
the air, and one on the earth, he deserves great credit 
for his sagacity. 

But he himself perceived evidently that this gene- 
ralisation was not quite applicable to all the gods, and 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA, i^q 

he goes on to say, " Or, it may be, these gods are all 
distinct beings, for the praises addressed to them are 
distinct, and their appellations also." This is quite 
right. It is the very object of most of these divine 
names to impart distinct individuality of the maini- 
festations of the powers of nature ; and though the 
philosopher or the inspired poet might perceive that 
these numerous names were but names, while that 
which was named was one and one only, this was 
certainly not the idea of most of the Vedic i?/shis 
themselves, still less of the people who listened to 
their songs at fairs and festivals. It is the pecuhar 
character of that phase of religious thought which 
we have to study in the Veda, that in it the Divine 
is conceived and represented as manifold, and that 
many functions are shared in common by various 
gods, no attempt having yet been made at organising 
the whole , body of the gods, sharply separating one 
from the other, and subordinating all of them to 
several or, in the end, to one supreme head. 

Availing ourselves of the division of the Vedic 
gods into terrestrial, aerial, and celestial, as proposed 
by some of the earliest Indian theolgians, we should 
have to begin with the gods connected with the earth. 

Before we examine them, however, we have first 
to consider one of the earliest objects of worship and 
adoration, namely Earth mid Heaven^ or Heaven 
and Earth, conceived as a divine couple. Not only 
in India, but among many other nations, both 
savage, half-savage, or civilised, we meet with 
Heaven and Earth as one of the earliest objects, 
pondered on, transfigured, and animated by the early 
poets and more or less clearly conceived by early 



1 6o ^^A T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

philosophers. It is surprising that it should be so, 
for the conception of the Earth as an independent 
being, and of Heaven as an independent being, and 
then of both together as a divine couple embracing 
the whole universe, requires a considerable effort of 
abstraction, far more than the concepts of other 
divine powers, such as the Fire, the Rain, the Light- 
ning, or the Sun. 

Still so it is, and as it may help us to under- 
stand the ideas about Heaven and Earth, as we find 
them in the Veda, and showusatthe same time the 
strong contrast between the mythology of the Aryans 
and that of real savages (a contrast of great im- 
portance, though I admit very difficult to explain). 
I shall read you first some extracts from a book, 
published by a friend of mine, the Rev. William 
Wyatt Gill, for many years an active and most 
successful missionary in Mangaia, one of those Poly- 
nesian islands, that form a girdle round one quarter 
of our globe,* and all share in the same language, 
the same religion, the same mythology, and the same 
customs. The book is called " Myths and Songs 
from the South Pacific,! and it is full of interest to 
the student of mythology and religion. 

The story, as told him by the natives of Mangaia, 
runs as follows. J 

'* * Es handelt sich hier nicht um amerikanische oder afn'kanische 
Zersplitterung, sondern eine iiberraschende Gleichartigkeit dehnt sich 
durch die Weite und Breite des Stillen Oceans, und wenn wir Oceanien 
in der vollen Auffassung nehmen mit Einschluss Mikround, Mela-nes- 
iens (bis Malaya^ selbst weiter. Es lasst sich sagen, dass ein einheit- 
licher Gedankenbau, in etwa 120 Langen und 70 Breitegraden, ein 
Viertel unsers Erdglobus iiberwblbt." Bastian, Die Heilige Sage der 
Polynesier, p. 57. 

t Henry S. King & Co., London, 1S76, % P. 58. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. i6i 

The sky is built of solid blue. At one time 
it almost touched the earth ; resting upon the stout 
broad leaves of the teve (which attains the height of 
about six feet) and the delicate indigenous arrow-root 

(whose slender stem rarely exceeds three feet) 

In this narrow space between earth and sky the inha- 
bitants of this world were pent up. Ru, whose usual 
residence was in Avaiki, or the shades, had come up 
for a time to this world of ours. Pitying the wretched 
confined residence of the inhabitants, he employed 
himself in endeavoring to raise the sky a little. For 
this purpose he cut a number of strong stakes of dif- 
ferent kinds of trees, and firmly planted them in the 
ground at Rangimotia, the centre of the island, and 
with him the centre of the world. This was a con- 
siderable improvement, as mortals were thereby 
enabled to stand erect and to walk about without 
inconvenience. Hence Ru was named " The sky-sup- 
porter." Wherefore Teka sings (1794): 

" Force up the sky, O Ru, 
And let the space be clear ! " 

" One day when the old man was surveying his 
work, his graceless son Maui contemptuously asked 
him what he was doing there. Ru replied, " Who 
told youngsters to talk t Take care of yourself, or I 
will hurl you out of existence." 

* " Do it, then," shouted Maui. 

" Ru was as good as his word, and forthwith seized 
Maui, who was small of stature, and threw him to a 
great height. In falling Maui assumed the form of 
a bird, and lightly touched the ground, perfectly un- 
harmed. Mdui, now thirsting for revenge, in a 



1 6 2 ^//-^ T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? 

moment resumed his natm-al form, but exaggerated to 
gigantic proportions, and ran to his father, saying : 

" Ru, who supportest the many heavens, 
The third, even to the highest, ascend I " 

Inserting his head between the old man's legs, he 
exerted all his prodigious strength, and hurled poor 
Ru, sky and all, to a tremendous height, — so high, 
indeed, that the blue sky could never get back again. 
Unluckily, however, for the sky-supporting Ru, his 
head and shoulders got entangled among the stars. 
He struggled hard, but fruitlessly, to extricate him- 
self. Maui walked off well pleased with having raised 
the sky to its present height, but left half his father's 
body and both his legs ingloriously suspended between 
heaven and earth. Thus perished Ru. His body 
rotted away, and his bones came tumbling down from_ 
time to time, and were shivered on the earth into 
countless fragments. These shivered bones of Ru 
are scattered over ever hill and valley of Mangaia, to 
the very edge of the sea." 

What the natives call " the bones of Ru " (t e i v i o 
Ru) are pieces of pumice-stone. 

Now let us consider, first of all, whether this story, 
which, with slight variations is told all over the 
Polynesian islands,* is pure non-sense, or whether 
there was originally some sense in it. My conviction 
is that non-sense is everywhere the child of sense, 
only that unfortunately many children, like that 
youngster Maui, consider themselves much wiser than 
their fathers, and occasionally succeed in hurling them 
out of existence. 

* There is a second version of the story even in the small island 
of Mangaia; see Myths and Songs, p. 71. 



THE, LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 16^ 

It is a peculiarity of many of the ancient myths 
that they represent events which happen every day, 
or every year, as having happened once upon a time.* 
The daily battle between day and night, the yearly 
battle between winter and spring, are represented 
almost like historical events, and some of the episodes 
and touches belonging originally to these constant 
battles of nature, have certainly been transferred 
into and mixed up with battles that took place at 
^ certain time, such as, for instance, the siege of 
Troy. When historical recollections failed, legendary 
accounts of the ancient battles between Night 
and Morning, Winter and Spring, were always at 
hand ; and, as in modern times we constantly hear 
*' good stories," which we have known from our child- 
hood, told again and again of any man whom they 
seem to fit, in the same manner, in ancient times, any 
act of prowess, or daring, or mischief, originally told 
of the sun, " the orient Conqueror of gloomy Night," 
was readily transferred to and believed of any local 
hero who might seem to be a second Jupiter, or Mars, 
or Hercules. 

I have little doubt therefore that as the accounts 
of a deluge, for instance, which we find almost every- 
where, are originally recollections of the annual tor- 
rents of rain or snow that covered the little worlds 
within the ken of the ancient village-bards, this 
tearing asunder of heaven and earth too was ori- 
ginally no more than a description of what might 
be seen every morning. During a dark night the 
sky seemed to cover the earth ; the two seemed to 
be one, and could not be distinguished one from the 

t See before, p, 138. 



1 64 ^^A T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? 

other. Then came the Dawn, which with its bright 

rays lifted the covering of the dark night to a certain 
point, till at last Maui appeared, small in stature, 
a mere child, that is, the sun of the morning — thrown 
up suddenly, as it were, when his first rays shot 
through the sky from beneath the horizon, then 
falling back to the earth, like a bird, and rising in 
gigantic form on the morning sky. The dawn now 
was hurled av/ay, and the sky was seen lifted high 
above the earth ; and Maui, the sun, marched on 
well pleased with having raised the sky to its present 
height. 

Why pumice-stone should be called the bones of 
Ru, we cannot tell, without knowing a great deal more 
of the language of Mangaia than we do at present. 
It is most likely an independent saying, and was 
afterwards united with the story of Ru and Maui. 

Now I must quote at least a few extracts from a 
Maori legend as written down by Judge Manning : * 

" This is the Genesis of the New Zealanders : 

" The Heavens which are above us, and the Earth 
which lies beneath us, are the progenitors of men, 
and the origin of all things. 

" Formerly the Heaven lay upon the Earth, and all 
was darkness. ... 

'' And the children of Heaven and Earth sought to 
discover the difference between light and darkness, 
between day and night. . . . 

" So the sons of Rangi (Heaven) and of Papa 
(Earth) consulted together, and said : ' Let us seek 
means whereby to destroy Heaven and Earth, or to 
separate them from each other." 

* Bastian, Heilige Sage der Polynesier, p. 36. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 165 

" Then said Tumatauenga (the God of War), * Let 
us destroy them both.' 

" Then said Tane-Mahuta (the Forest God), ' Not 
so ; let them be separated. Let one of them go up- 
wards and become a stranger to us ; let the other 
remain below and be a parent for us.' 

" Then four of the gods tried to Separate Heaven 
and Earth, but did not succeed, while the fifth, Tan e, 
succeeded. 

'' After Heaven- and Earth had been separated, great 
storms arose, or, as the poet expresses it, one of their 
sons, Tawhiri-Matea, the god of the winds, tried to 
revenge the outrage committed on his parents by 
his brothers. Then follow dismal dusky days, and 
dripping chilly skies, and arid scorching blasts. AH 
the gods fight, till at last Tu only remains, the god 
of war, who had devoured all his brothers, except 
the Storm. More fights follow, in which the greater 
part of the earth was overwhelmed by the waters, 
and but a small portion remained dry. After that, 
light continued to increase, and as the light increased, 
so also the people who had been hidden between 
Heaven and Earth increased. . . . And so generation 
was added to generation down to the time of Maui- 
Potiki, he who brought death into the world. 

" Now in these latter days Heaven remains far re- 
moved from his wife, the Earth ; but the love of the 
wife rises upward in sighs towards her husband. These 
are the mists which fly upwards from the mountain- 
tops ; and the tears of Heaven fall downwards on his 
wife ; behold the dew-drops ! " 

So far the Maori Genesis. 

Let us now return to the Veda, and compare these 



1 66 ^^-4 T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

crude and somewhat grotesque legends with the 
language of the ancient Aryan poets. In the hymns 
of the Rig-veda the separating and keeping apart of 
Heaven and Earth is several times alluded to, and 
here too it is represented as the work of the most 
valiant gods. In I. 6"/^ 3 it is Agni, fire, who holds 
the earth and supports the heaven ; in-X. 89, 4 it is 
Indra who keeps them apart ; in IX. loi, 15 Soma is 
celebrated for the same deed, and in III. 31, 12 other 
gods too share the same honor.* 

In the Aitareya Brahma;/a we read : t " These two 
worlds (Heaven and Earth) were once joined together. 
They went asunder. Then it did not rain, nor did 
the sun shine. And the five tribes did not agree 
with one another. The gods then brought the two 
(Heaven and Earth) together, and when they came 
together, they performed a wedding of the gods." 

Here we have in a shorter form the same funda- 
mental ideas ; first, that formerly Heaven and Earth 
were together ; that afterwards they were separated ; 
that when they were thus separated there was war 
throughout nature, and neither rain nor sunshine : 
that, lastly. Heaven and Earth were conciliated, and 
that then a great wedding took place. 

Now I need hardly remind those who are acquainted 
with Greek and Roman literature, how familiar these 
and similar conceptions about a marriage between 
Heaven and Earth were in Greece and Italy. They 
seem to possess there a more special reference to the 
annual reconciliation between Heaven and Earth, 
which takes place in spring, and to their former 

* Bergaigne, La Religion V^dique, p. 240. 
■^ Ait. Br. IV. 27 ; Muir, iv, p. 23. 



tBE LESSONS Op' THE VEDA. 167 

estrangement during winter. But the first cosmo- 
logical separation of the two always points to the 
want of light and the impossibility of distinction 
during the night, and the gradual lifting up of the 
blue ^y through the rising of the sun.* 

In the Homeric hymns t the Earth is addressed as 

" Mother of Gods, the wife of the starry Heaven." % 

and the Heaven or ^Ether is* often called the father. 
Their marriage too is described, as, for instance, by 
Euripides, when he says : 

" There is the mighty Earth, Jove's iEther : 

He (the ^ther) is the creator of men and gods ; 
The earth receiving the moist drops of rain. 

Bears mortals. 
Bears food, and the tribes of animals. 
Hence she is not unjustly regarded 
As the mother of all."§ 

And what is more curious still is that we have 
evidence that Euripides received this doctrine from 
his teacher, the philosopher Anaxagoras. For Dio- 
nysius of Halicarnassus||, tells us that Euripides 
frequented the lectures of Anaxagoras. Now, it was 
the theory of that philosopher that originally all 
things were in all things, but that afterwards they be- 
come separated. Euripides later in life associated with 

* See Muir, iv. p. 24. t Homer, Hymn xxx. 17. 

5 ICalpe Bewv jxrjrrjp, aXolC Ovpavov ddtepoevTo'o. 

§ Euripides, Dhrysippus, 6 (edit. Didot, p. 824) : — 

Faia iJ.e'yi6r7] Hcd ^idi aiB7}p, 

6 jukv (XvSpGOTtcov Kai QecSv yevEroDp^ 

7) 5' vypofSoXoVi drayova'i voriov^ 

Ttapads^ajuevTj tihtei Bvarov'sy 

riKTEi dk ftopdVy (pvA-d rs Brip(2v, 

oQev ovk ddixoo'^ 

/■if/rrip TcdvTGDv revojutdrat. 
t Dionysius Halic. vol. v. p. 355 ; Muir, v. p. 27. 



1 68 WHA T CAN INDIA TEA CB t/S f 

Sokrates, and became doubtful regarding that theory^ 
He accordingly propounds the ancient doctrine by 
the mouth of another, namely Melanippe, who says : 

*' This saying (myth) is not mine, but came from 
my mother, that formerly Heaven and Earth were 
one shape ; . but when they were separated from each 
other they gave birth and brought all things into the 
light, trees, birds, beas*ts, and the fishes whom the 
sea feeds, and the race of mortals." 

Thus we have met with the same idea of the ori- 
ginal union, of a separation, and of a subsequent 
re-union of Heaven and Earth in Greece, in India, 
and in the Polynesian islands. 

Let us now see how the poets of the Veda address 
these two beings, Heaven and Earth. 

They are mostly addressed in the dual, as two 
beings forming but one concept. We meet, however, 
with verses which are addressed to the Earth by 
herself, and which speak of her as " kind, without 
thorns, and pleasant to dwell on,"* while there are clear 
traces in some of the hymns that at one time Dyaus, 
the sky, was the supreme deity. f When invoked 
together they are called Dyavapr/thivyau, from 
dyu, the sky, and prithivi, the broad earth. 

If we examine their epithets, we find that many 
of them reflect simply the physical aspect of Heaven 
and Earth. Thus they are called uru, wide, uru- 
vysy^as, widely expanded, dure-ante, with limits 
far apart, gabhira, deep, ghntavat, giving fat, 
madhudugha, yielding honey or dew, payasvat, 
full of milk, bhiiri-retas, rich in seed. 

* Rig-veda. P. 22, 15. 

* Sec Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. p. 468 



THE LESSONS OF THE VED4. 169 

Another class of epithets represents them already 
as endowed with certain human and superhuman 
qualities, such as a s a^>^ a t, never tiring a^ a r a, not 
decaying, which brings us very near to immortal ; 
a d r u h , not injuring, or not deceiving, pra/^etas, 
provident, and then pit a-m a t a, father and mother, 
devaputra, having the gods for their sons, ? i - 
t a v r / d h and ri\.z.N2i\., protectors of the ^^'ta, of 
what is right, guardians of eternal laws. 

Here you see what is so interesting in the Veda, 
the gradual advance from the material to the spi- 
ritual, from the sensuous to the supersensuous, from 
the human to the superhuman and the divine. 
Heaven and Earth were seen, and, according to our 
notions, they might simply be classed as visible and 
finite beings. But the ancient poets were more honest 
to themselves. They could see Heaven and Earth, but 
they never saw them in their entirety. They felt 
that there was something beyond the purely finite 
aspect of these beings, and therefore they thought of 
them, not as they would think of a stone, or a tree, 
or a dog, but as something not-finite, not altogether 
visible or knowable, yet as something important to 
themselves, powerful,- strong to bless, but also strong 
to hurt. Whatever was between Heaven and Earth 
seemed to be theirs, their property, their realm, their 
dominion. They held and embraced all ; they seemed 
to have produced all. The Devas or bright beings, 
the sun, the dawn, the fire, the wind, the rain, were 
all theirs, and were called therefore the offspring of 
Heaven and earth. Thus Heaven and Earth became 
the Universal Father and Mother. 

Then we ask at once, '^ Were then these Heaven 



i^o WHA T CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

and Earth gods ? But gods in what sense ? In our 
sense of God ? Why, in our sense, God is altogether 
incapable of a plural. Then in the Greek sense of 
the word ? No, certainly not, for what the Greeks 
called gods was the result of an intellectual growth 
totally independent of the Veda or of India. We 
must never forget that what we call gods in ancient 
mythologies are not substantial, living, individual 
beings, of whom we can predicate this .or that. 
Deva, which we translate by god, is nothing but an 
adjective, expressive of a quality shared by heaven 
and earth, by the sun and the stars and the dawn 
and the sea, namely brightness ; and the idea of god, 
at that early time, contains neither more nor less 
than what is shared in common by all these bright 
beings. That •is to say, the idea of god is not an 
idea ready-made, which could be applied in its abstract 
purity to heaven and earth and other such like 
beings ; but it is an idea, growing out of the con- 
cepts of heaven and earth and of the other bright 
beings, slowly separating itself from them, but never 
containing more than what was contained, though 
confusedly, in the objects to which it was successively 
applied. 

Nor must it be supposed that heaven and earth, 
having once been raised to the rank of undecaying 
or immortal beings, of divine parents, of guardians 
of the laws, were thus permanently settled in the 
religious consciousness of the people. Far from it. 
When th« ideas of other gods, and of more active 
and more distinctly personal gods had been elabo- 
rated, the Vedie i?ishis asked without hesitation, 
Who then has made heaven and earth } not exactly 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA, 



171 



Heaven and Earth, as conceived before, but heaven 
and earth as seen every day, as a part of what began 
to be called Nature or the Universe. 

Thus one poet says : * 

" He was indeed among the gods the cleverest 
workman who produced the two brilliant ones 
(heaven and earth), that gladden all things, he who 
measured out the two bright ones (heaven and earth) 
by his wisdom, and established them on everlasting 
supports." 

And again :f " He was a good workman who pro- 
duced heaven and earth ; the wise, who by his 
might brought together these two (heaven and earth), 
the wide, the deep, the well-fashioned in the bottom- 
less space." 

Very soon this great work of making heaven and 
earth was ascribed, like other mighty works, to the 
mightiest of their gods, to Indra. At first we read 
that Indra, originally only a kind of yupiter pluvinSy 
or god of rain, stretched out heaven and earth, like 
a hide ; % that he held them in his hand, § that he 
upholds heaven and earth, || and that he grants heaven 
and earth to his worshippers. \ But very soon Indra 
is praised for having made. Heaven and Earth ; ** and 
then, when the poet remembers that Heaven and 
Earth had been praised elsewhere as the parents 
of the gods, and more especially as the parents of 
Indra, he does not hesita;te for a moment, but §ays : ft 
'* What poets living before us have reached the end 
of all thy greatness ? for thoii hast indeed begotten 

*Rig-Veda I. 160, 4.' t Rig-Veda vi. 56, 3. % L. e. VIII. 6, 5, 
§L. c. 111.30,5. ilL. 0.111,32,8. 

IT L. c. III. 34, 8. ** L. c. VIII. 36, 4. tt L. c. X. 54 3. 



1 7 2 ^//^ T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

thy father and thy mother together ^ from thy own 
body ! " 

That is a strong measure, and a god who once 
could do that, was no doubt capable of anything 
afterwards. The same idea, namely that Indra is 
greater than heaven and earth, is expressed in a less 
outrageous way by another poet, who says f that 
Indra is greater than heaven and earth, and that 
both together are only a half of Indra. Or again : } 
"The divine Dyaus bowed before Indra, before Indra 
the great Earth bowed with her wide spaces.' " At 
the birth of thy splendor Dyaus trembled, the Earth 
trembled for fear of thy anger." § 

Thus, from one point of view, Heaven and Earth 
were the greatest gods, they were the parents of 
everything, and therefore of the gods also, such as 
Ind and others. 

" But, from another point of view, every god that 

was considered as supreme at one time or other, 

must necessarily have made heaven and earth, must 

at all events be greater than heaven and earth, and 

thus the child became greateV than the father, aye, 

became the father of his father. Indra was not 

the only god that created heaven and earth. In one 

hymn || that creation is ascribed to Soma and Pushan, 

by no means very prominent characters ; in another ^ 

to Hira/^yagarbha (the golden germ) ; in another 

again to a god who is simply called Dhatn, the 

Creator, ** or Fijvakarman,tt the maker of all things. 

Other gods, such as Mitra and Savitr^, names of 

* Cf. IV. 17, 4, where Dyaus is the father of Indra ; see however 
Muir iv. 31, note. t Rig-veda VI. 30, i. 

X Rig-veda I. 131, i. § L. e. IV. 17, 2. || L. c. II, 4©? '• 

IT L. c. X. 131, 9. ** L. c. X. 190, 3. tt L. c. X. 81, 2. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. t*l% 

the sun, are praised for upholding Heaven and Earth, 
and the same task is sometimes performed by the 
old god Varu;/a * also.^ 

What I wish you to observe in all this is the 
perfect freedom with which these so-called gods or 
Devas are handled, and particularly the ease and 
naturalness with which now the one, now the other 
emerges as supreme out of this chaotic theogony. 
This is the peculiar character of the ancient Vedic 
religion, totally different both from the Polytheism 
and from the Monotheism as we see it in the Greek 
and the Jewish religions ; and if the Veda had taught 
us nothing else but this honotheistic phase, which 
must everywhere have preceded the more highly 
organized phase of Polytheism which we see in 
Greece, in Rome, and elsewhere, the study of the 
Veda would not have been in vain. 

It may be quite true that the poetry of the Veda 
is neither beautiful, in our sense of the word, nor 
very profound ; but it is instructive. When we see 
those two giant spectres of Heaven and Earth on 
the background of the Vedic religion, exerting their 
influence for a time, and then vanishing before the 
light of younger and more active gods, we learn a 
lesson which it is well to learn, and which we can 
hardly learn anywhere else — the lesson how gods were 
made and unmade-^\iov^ the Beyond or the Infinite 
was named by different names in order to bring it 
near to the mind of man, to make it for a time com- 
prehensible, until, when name after name had proved 
of no avail, a nameless God was felt to answer best 
the restless cravings of the human heart. 

*L. c. VI. 70, i» 



1 7 4 WNA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

I shall next translate to you the hymn to which 1 
referred before as addressed to the Rivers. If the 
Rivers are to be called deities at all, they belong to 
the class of terrestrial deities. But the reason why 
I single out this hymn is not so much because it 
throws new light on the theogonic process, but 
because it may help to impart some reality to the 
vague conceptions which we form to ourselves of the 
ancient Vedic poets and their surroundings. The 
rivers invoked are, as we shall see, the real rivers of 
the Punjab, and the poem shows a much wider geo- 
graphical-horizon than we should expect from a mere 
village bard.* 

1. "■ Let the poet declare, O Waters, your exceeding 
greatness, here in the seat ofVivasvat.t By seven 
and seven they have come forth in three courses, but 
the Sindhu (the Indus) exceeds all the other wander- 
ing rivers by her strength. 

2. "Varu^^a dug out paths for thee to walk on, 
when thou rannest to the race. $ Thou proceedest 

*Rig-veda X. 75. See Hibbert Lectures, Lect. iv. 

t Vivasvat is a name of the sun, and the seat or home of Vivasvat 
can hardly be anything but the earth, as the home of the sun, or, in a 
more special sense, the place where a sacrifice is offered. 

X I formerly translated yat vagan abhi adrava-^ tvam by *' when 
thou rannest for the prizes." Grassman had translated similarly. 
" When thou, O Sindhu, rannest to the prize of the battle," while Lud- 
wig wrote, "When thou, O Sindhu, wast flowing on to greater powers." 
Va^a, cornected with vegeo, vigeo, vigil, wacker (see Curtius, Grund- 
ziige, No. i5Q),is one of the many difficult words in the Veda the 
general meaning of which maybe guessed, but in many places cannot 
yet be determined with certainty. Va^a occurs very frequently, both 
in the singular and the plural, and some of its meanings are clear 
enough. The Petersburg Dictionary gives the following list of them 
— swiftness, race, prize of race, gain, treasure, race-horse, etc. Here 
we perceive at once the difiiculty of tracing all these meanings back 



THE LESSONS OF THk VEDA, IJ3 

6n a precipitous ridge of the earth, when thou art 
lord in the van of all the moving streams. 

3. " The sound rises up to heaven above the earth ; 
she stirs up with splendor her endless power.* As 
from a cloud, the showers thunder forth, when the 
Sindhu comes roaring like a bull. 

4. " To thee, O Sindhu, they (the other rivers) come 
as lowing mother-cows (run) to their young with their 
milk.f Like a king in battle thou leadest the two 
wings, when thou reachest the front of these down- 
rushing rivers, 

5. " Accept, O Ganga (Ganges), Yamuna (Jumna), 
Sarasvati (Sursuti), Sutudri (Sutlej), Parush;/i (Ira- 

to a common source, though it might be possible to begin with the 
meanings of strength, strife, contest, race, whether friendly or warlike, 
then to proceed to what is won in a race or in war, viz. booty, trea- 
sure, and lastly to take vaga/z in a more general sense of acquisitions, 
goods, even goods bestowed as gifts. We have a similar transition of 
meaning in the Greek aQAo?, contest for a prize, and aOXov, the 
prize of contest, reward, gift, while in the plural ra a6Aa stands again 
for contest, or even the place of combat. The Vedic va^mbhara 
may in fact be rendered bya6A.o<pd/3o5va^asati by dOXodvrrj. 
The transition from fight to prize is seen in passages such as : 
Rig-veda VI. 45, 12, va^an indra jravayyan tvaya ^eshma hilam 
dhdnam, " May we with thev help, O Indra, win the glorious fights 
the offered prize" (cf, dBXoBsvrj's). 

Rig-veda VIII. 19. 18, te it va^ebhi>^ ^"gyu/^ mahat dhdnam, " They 
won great wealth by battles." 

What we want for a proper understanding of our verse, are passages 
where we have, as here, a movement towards va^j in the plural. Such 
passages are few ; for instance; X. 53. 8, atra^ahama ye ajan ajeva/4 
jivan vayam ut tarema abhi va^in, " Let us leave here those who 
were unlucky (the dead), and let us get up to lucky toils." No more 
probably meant here when the Sindhu is said to run towards her 
v%^s, that is her struggles, her fights, her race across the mountains 
with the other rivers, 

* On .fushma, strength, see Rig-veda, translation, vol. i, p. 105. 
We find jubhram j-ushman II. 1 1* 4 ; and iyati with jushman IV. 17, I2» 

t See Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v^ p. 344. 



t ^ 6 ^^^ T CAN INDIA Tea cii us f 

vati, Ravi,) my praise ! ^ With the Asikni (Akesines) 
listen, O Marudv;/dha, t and with the Vitasta (Hy- 
daspes, Behat) ; O Ar^ikiaya,^ listen with the Sus- 
homa§. 

6. " First thou goest united with the Tnsh/ama 
on thy journey, with the Susartu, the Rasa (Ra;;/ha, 
Araxes || ? ), and the 5vett, — O Sindhn, with the Kubha 
(Kophen, Cabul river) to the Gomati (G-omal), with 
the Mehatnu to the Krumu (Kurum) — with whom 
thou proceedest together. 

7. " Sparkling, bright, with mighty splendor she 
carries the water across the plains — the unconquered 
Sindhu, the quickest of the quick, like a beautiful 
mare — a sight to see. 

8. " Rich in horses, in chariots, in garments, in 
gold, in booty,^ in wool, ** and in straw,f f the Sindhu, 

* " O Marudvr/dho with Asikni, Vitasto ; O Ar^ikiyo, listen with 
the Sushomo," Ludwig, " Asikni and Vitasto and MarudvWdha, 
with the Sushomo, hear us, O Ar^ikiyo," Grasmann. 
^ t Marudvr/dho, a general name for a river. According to Roth 
the combined course of the Akesines and Hydaspes, before the junc- 
tion with the Hydraotes • according to Ludwig the river after the 
junction with Hydraotes. Zimmer (Altindisches Leben, p. 12) adopts 
Roth's Kiepert in his maps follow's Ludwig's opinion. 

X According to Y^ska the Ar^kiy^ is the Vivien de Saint-Martain 
takes it for the country watered by the Suwan, the Soanos of Megas- 
thenes. 

§ Accordng to Yaska the Sushom^, is the Indus. Vivien de Saint- 
Martin identifies it with the Suwan. Zimmer (1. c. p. 14) points out 
that in Arrian, Indica, iv. 12, there is a various reading Soamos for 
Soanos. 

II Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i, p. 157, 

H Va^inivati is by no means an easy word. Hence all translators 
vary, and none settles the meaning. Muir translates, " yielding 
nutriment;" Zimmer, "having plenty of quick horses ;'* Ludwig, "like a 
strong mare.'' Va^n,no doubt, means a strong horse, a racer, butva^* 
ni never occurs in the Rig-veda in the sense of a mare, and the text is 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA, 177 

handsome and young, clothes herself in sweet 
flowers.* 

9. " The Sindhu has yoked her easy chariot with 

not va^inivat but va^nivati. If va^ni meant mare, we might translate 
rich in mares, but that would be a mere repetition after svajva, pos- 
sessed of good hcrses. Va^'nivati is chiefly applied to Ushas, Sarasvati, 
and he-re to the river Sindhu. It is joined with va^ebhi/z, Rig-veda I. 3. 
10, which if vao-ini meant mare, would mean *' rich in mares through 
horses." We also read, Rig-veda I. 48, 16, sam (na/z mimikshva) 
va^ai/^ va^nivati, which we can hardly translate by "give us horses, thou 
who art possessed of mares ; " nor, Rig-veda I. 92, 15, yiikshva hi 
va^inivati aj-van, " harness the horses , thou who art rich in mares." 
In most of the passages where va§inivati occurs, the goddess thus 
addressed is represented as rich, and asked to bestow wealth, and I 
should therefore prefer to take va^ni, as a collective abstract noun, 
like tretini, in the sense of wealth, originally booty, and to translate 
vaoinivati simply by rich, a meaning well adapted to every passage 
where the word occurs. 

\ Ur;zavati, rich in wool, probably refers to the flocks of sheep for 
which the northwest of India was famous. See Rig-veda I. 126, 7. 

** Silamavati does not occur again in the Rig-veda. Muir translates, 
" rich in plants ; " Zimmer, " rich in water ; " Ludwig takes it as a pro- 
per name. Saya;za states that silama is a plant which is made into 
ropes. That the meaning of silamavati was forgotten at an early 
time we see by the Atharva-veda III. 12. 2, substituting snnr/tavati 
for silamavati, as preserved in the 6'ankhS,yana Gr/hyasutras, 3, 3, 
I think silama means straw, from whatever plant it may be taken, and 
this would be equally applicable to a j-ala, a house, a suth;za, a post and 
to the river Indus. It may have been, as Ludwig conjectures, an old 
.ocal name, and in that case it may possibly account for the na^e 
given in later times to the Suleiman range. 

* Madhuvr/dh is likewise a word which does not occur again in 
the Rig-veda. Saya^za explains it by nirguw^i and similar plants? 
but it is doubtful what plant is meant. Guwafa is the name of a 
grass, madhuvrzdh therefore may have been a plant such as sugar- 
cane, that yielded a sweet juice, the Upper Indus being famous for 
sugar-cane; see Hiouen-thsang, II, p. 105. I take adhivaste with 
Roth in the sense '* she dresses herself," as we might say " the river is 
dressed in heather.'* Muir translates, " she traverses a land yielding 
sweetness ; " Zimmer, " she clothes herself in Madhuv^Mh ; " Ludwig, 
"the Silamavati throws herself into the increaser of the honey-sweet 



178 IVHAl CAN INDIA TEACH US ? 

horses , may she conquer prizes for us in the race. 
The greatness of her chariot is praised as truly 
great — that chariot which is irresistible, which has 
its own glory, and abundant strength."* 

This hymn does not sound perhaps very poetical, 
m our sense of the word ; yet if you will try to realise 
the thoughts of the poet who composed it, you will 
perceive that it is not without some bold and power- 
ful conceptions. 

Take the modern peasants, living in their villages 
by the side of the Thames, and you must admit that 
he would be a remarkable man who could bring him- 
self to look on the Thames as a kind of general, 
riding at the head of many English rivers, and lead- 
ing them on to a race or a battle. Yet it is easier 
to travel in England, and to gain a commanding view 
of the river-system of the country, than it was three 
thousand years ago to travel over India, even over 
that part of India which the poet of our hymn com- 
mands. He takes in at one swoop three great river- 
systems, or, as he calls them, three great armies of 
rivers — those flowing from the North- West into the 
Indus, those joining it from the North-East, and, in 
the distance, the Granges and the Jumnah with their 
tributaries. Look on the map and you will see how 
well these three armies are determined ; but our 
poet had no map — he had nothing but high moun- 
tains and sharp eyes to carry out his trigonometrical 
survey. Now I call a man, who for the first time 

dew." All this shows how little progress can be made in Vedic 
scholarship by merely translating either words or verses, without 
giving at the sama time a full justifieation ®f the meaning assigned t« 
every single word. 

* See Petersburg Dictionary, s. v. virapjin. 



THE LESSONS CF THE VEDA. 1 79 

could see those three marching armies of rivers, a 
poet. 

The next thing that strikes one in that hymn — 
if hymn we must call it — is the fact that all these 
rivers, large and small, have their own proper names. 
That shows a considerable advance in civilised life, 
and it proves no small degree of coherence, or what 
the French call solidarity, between the tribes who had 
taken possession of Northren India. Most settlers 
call the river on whose banks they settle " the rive^y 
Of course there are many names for river. It may 
be called the runner *, the fertiliser, the roarer — or, 
with a little poetical metaphor, the arrow, the horse, 
the cow, the father, the mother, the watchman, the 
child,of the mountains. Many rivers had many names 
in different parts of their course, and it was only 
when communication between different settlements 
became more frequent, and a fixed terminology was 
felt to be a matter of necessity, that the rivers of a 
country were properly baptized and registered. All 
this had been gone through in India before our hymn 
became possible. 

And now we have to consider another, to my mind 
most startling fact. We here have a number of 
names of the rivers of India, as they were known to 
one single poet, say about 1000 b. c. We then hear 
nothing of India till we come to the days of Alex- 
ander, and when we look at the names of the Indian 
rivers, represented as well as they could be by Alex- 
ander's companions, mere strangers in India, and by 

f ^* Among *h« Hottentots, the Kunene, ®kavang» and #range 
rivers, all have the name of Garib, i. e. the Runner." T>r. Theoph. 
Hahn. Cape Tinnes, July 11, 1S82. 



I So WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf 

means of a strange language and a strange alphabet, 
we recognise without much difficulty, nearly all of the 
old Vedic names. 

In this respect the names of rivers have a great 
advantage over the names of towns in India. What 
we now call Dilli or Delhi was in ancient times called 
Indraprastha, in later times Shahjahahdnabdd. Otide 
is Ayodhya, but the old name of Saketa is forgotten. 
The town of Pa/aliputra, known to the Greeks as 
Palhnbothra, is now called Pat.na. * 

Now I can assure you this persistency of the Vedic 
river names was to my mind something so startling 
that I often said to miyself. This cannot be — there 
m.ust be something wrong here. I do not wonder so 
much at the names of the Indus and the Gancres 
being the same. The Indus was known to early 
traders, whether by sea or by land. Skylax sailed 
from the country of the Paktys, i. e. the Pushtus, as 
the Afghans still call themselves, down to the mouth 
of the Indus. That was under Darius Hystaspes 
(521-486). Even before that time India and the 
Indians were known by their name, which was derived 
from SindJiity the name of their frontier river. The 
neighboring tribes who spoke Iranic languages all 
pronounced, like the Persian, the s as an h. f Thus 
Sindhu became Hindhu (Hidhu), and, as h's were 
dropped even at that early time, Hindhu became 
Indu. Thus' the river was called Indos, the people 
[jtdoi by the Greeks, v^rho first heard of India from 
the Persians. 

Sindku probably meant . originally the divider, 

* Cunningham Archaeological Survey of India, vqI. xii. p. 113. 
t Pliny, Hist, Nat. vi. 20, 71 : " Indus incolis Smdus appellatus.'* 



ttik lRssons of tHk VMDA, iSt 

keeper, and defender, from sidh, to keep off. It was 
a masculine, before it became a feminine. No more 
tellings nam.e could have been given to a broad river, 
which guarded peaceful settlers both against the 
inroads of hostile tribes and the attacks of wild 
animals. A common name for the ancient settle- 
ments of the Aryans in India was " the Seven Rivers," 
" Sapta Sindhava/i!." But though s i n d h u was used 
as an appellative noun for river in general (cf. Rig- 
veda VI. 19, 5, samudre na sindiiava/z yadamana/2, 
" like rivers lodging for the sea''), it remained though- 
cut the whole history of India the name of its power- 
ful guardian river, the Indus. 

In some passages of the Rig-veda it has been 
pointed out that s i n d h u might better be translated 
by " sea " a change of meaning, if so it can be called 
fully explained by the geographical conditions of the 
country. There are places where people could swim 
across the Indus, there are others where no eye 
could tell whether the boundless expanse of water 
should be called river or sea. The two run into each 
other, as every sailor knows, and naturally the 
meaning of s i n d h u, river, runs into the meaning of 
s i n d h u, sea. 

But besides the two great rivers, the Indus and 
the Ganges,— 'in Sanskrit the Ganga, literally the 
Go-go, we have the smaller rivers, and many of their 
names also agree with the fiames preserved to us by 
the companions of Alexander.* 

The Yamuna, the Jumna, was known to Ptolemy 

* The history of these names has been treated by Professor Lassen, 
in his " Indische Alterthumskunde," and more lately by Professor 
Kaegi, in his very careful essay, "Der Rig-veda," pp. 146, 147. 



i ^2 ^^^ T CAN INDIA TEA CH OS f 

^isAiafxovva^ to Pliny as Jomanes, to Arriail, sotne- 
what corrupted, as Jobares.f 

The 5utudr!, or as it was afterwards called, ^ata- 
dru, meaning '' running in a hundred streams," was 
known to Ptolemy 2isZaSapdr]?ox Zapadpo^, Pliny 
called it Sydrus ; and Megasthenes, too, was probably 
acquainted with it 2i^ Zadap6r}<;. In the Veda J it 
formed with the Vipa^ the frontier of the Punjab, 
and we hear of fierce battles fought at that time, it 
may be on the same spot where in 1846 the battle 
of the Sutledge was fought by Sir Hugh Gough and 
Sir Henry Hardinge. It was probably on the Viplf 
(later Vipa^a), a north-western tributary of the Sut- 
ledge, that Alexander's army turned back. The 
river was then called Hyphasis ; Pliny calls it 
Hypasis,§ a very fair approximation to the Vedic 
Vipa^, which means " unfettered." Its modern name 
is Bias or Bejah. 

The next river on the west is the Vedic Parushm, 
better known as Iravati,l| which Strabo calls Hyar- 
otis, while Arrian gives it a more Greek appearance 
by calling it Hydraotes. It is the modern Rawi. 
It was this river which the Ten Kings when attacking 
the Tntsus under Sudas tried to cross from the 
west by cutting off its water. But their stratagem 

* Ptol. vii. I, 29. t Arrian, Indica, viii. 5. 

j: Rig-veda III. 33, i : " From the lap of the mountains VipCu and 
^utudri rush forth with their water like two lusty mares neigh- 
ing, freed from their tethers, like two bright mother-cows licking 
(their calf), 

'' Ordered by Indra and waiting his bidding you run toward the 
sea like two charioteers ; running together, as your waters rise, the 
one goes into the other, you bright ones." 

§ Other classical names are Hypanis, Bipasis, and Bibasis* 
Yaska identifies it with the Ar^ikiya. || Cf. Nirukta IX. 26. 



THE LESSONS OF THE VEDA. 183 

failed, and they perished in the river (Rig-veda VII. 
18, 8-9). 

We then come to the Asikni, which means ' black." 
That river had another name also, ^andrabhaga, 
which means "streak of the moon." The Greeks, 
however, pronounced that name^arc^o'/oo^oa'^/o^and 
this had the unlucky meaning of " the devourer of 
Alexander." Hesychius tells us that in order to avert 
the bad omen Alexander changed the name of that 
river intOy4;^f<5'zV77?^ which would mean " the Healer ; *' 
but he does not tell, what the Veda tells us, that 
this name .r47i;e(5'zV;;? was a Greek adaptation of another 
name of the same river, namely Asikni, which had 
evidently supplied to Alexander the idea of calling 
the Asiknt ^Amaivrji. It is the modern Chinab. 

Next to the Akesines we have the Vedic Vitast^, 
the last of the rivers of the Punjab, changed in Greek 
into Hydaspes. It was to this river that Alexander 
retired, before sending his fleet down the Indus and 
leading his army back to Babylon, It is the modern 
Behat or Jilam. * 

I could identify still more of these Vedic rivers, 
such as, for instance, the Kubha, the Greek Cophen, 
the modern Kabul river ; * but the names which I have 

* " The first tributaries which join the Indus before its meeting 
with the Kubha or the Kabul river cannot be determined. All 
travellers in these northern countries complain of the continual 
changes in the names of the rivers, and we can hardly hope t© 
find traces of the Vedic names in existence there after the lapse of 
three or four thousand years. The rivers intended may be the 
Shauyook, Ladak, Abba Seen, and Burrindu, and one of the four 
rivers, the Rasa, has assumed an almost fabulous character in the 
Veda. After the Indus has joined the Kubha or the Kabul river, 
two names occur, the Gomati and Krumu, which I believe I was 
the first to indentify with the modern rivers the Gonial and Kurrum. 
(Roth, Nirukta, JErlauterungen, p. 43, Anm.) The Gomal falls 



1 84 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f - 

traced from the Veda to Alexander, and in many 
cases from Alexander' again to our own time, seem to 
me sufficient to impress upon us the real and his- 
torical character of the Veda. Suppose the Veda 
were a forgery — suppose -at least that it had been 
put together after the time of Alexander — how could 
we explain these names ? They are names that have 
mostly a meaning in Sanskrit, they are names corre 
sponding very closely to their Greek corruptions, as 
pronounced and written down by people who did not 
know Sanskrit. How is a forgery possible here ? 

I selected this hymn for two reasons. First, because 
it shows us the widest geographical horizon of the Vedic 
poets, confined by the snowy mountains in the North, 
the Indus and the range of the Suleiman mountains 
in the West, the Indus or the sea in the Sauth, and 
the valley of the Jumna and Ganges in the East. 
Beyond that, the world, though open, was unknown 
to the Vedic poets. Secondly, because the same 

into the Indus, between Dera Ismael Khan and Paharpore, and 
although Elphinstone calls it a river only during the rainy season, 
Klaproth (Foe-koue-ki, p. 23) .describes its upper course as far 
more considerable, and adds ; " Un pen a I'est de Sirmagha, le Gomal 
traverse la chaine de montagnes de Soliman, passe devant Raghzi 
et fertilise le pays liabite par les tribus de Dauletkhail et de 
Gandehpour, II se desseche au defile de Pezou, et son lit ne se 
remplit plus d'eau que dans la saison des pluies : alors seulement 11 
re joint la droite de I'Indus, au sud-est du bourg de Paharpour." 
The Kurrum falls into the Indus North of the Gomal, while, ac- 
cording to the poet, we should expect it South. It might be urged 
that poets are not bound by the same rules as geographers, as we 
see, for instance, in the verse immediately preceding. But if it 
should be taken as a serious objection, it will be better to give up 
the Gomati than the Krumu, the latter being the larger of the two, 
and we might then take Goraati, " rich in cattle," as an adjective 
belonging to Krumu," — From a review of General Cunningham's 
•'Ancient Geography of India/' in NaticrCi 1S71, Sept. 14, 



THE LESSONS OE THE VEDA. 185 

hymn gives us also a kind of historical background 
to the Vedic age. These rivers, as we may see them 
to-day, as they were seen by Alexander and his Mace- 
donians, were seen also by the Vedic poets. Here 
we have an historical continuity — almost living wit- 
nesses, to tell us that the people whose songs have 
been so strangely, aye, you may almost say, so mira- 
culously preserved to us, were real people, lairds 
with their clans, priests, or rather, servants of their 
gods, shepherds with their flocks, dotted about on 
the hills and valleys, with enclosures or palisades 
here and there, with a few strongholds, too, in case 
of need — living their short life on earth, as at that 
time life might be lived by men, without much push- 
ing and crowding and trampling on each other — 
spring, summer and winter leading them on from 
year to year, and the sun in his rising and setting 
lifting up their thoughts from their meadows and 
groves which they loved, to a world in the East, 
from which they had come, or to a world in the 
West, to which they were gladly hastening on. They 
had what I call religion, though it was very simple, 
and hardly reduced as yet to the form of a creed. 
" There is a Beyond," that was all they felt and knew, 
though they tried, as well as they could, to give names 
to that Beyond, and thus to change religion into a re- 
ligion. They had not as yet a name for God^ — cer- 
tainly not in our sense of the word — or even a general 
name for the gods ; but they invented name after 
name to enable them to grasp and comprehend by 
some outward and visible tokens powers whose pres- 
ence they felt in nature, though their true and full 
essence was to them? gg it is to us, invif^ible and incom- 
prehensible. 



hthk S)ntte0, 



The next important phenomenon of nature which 
was represented in the Veda as a terrestrial deity 
is Fire, in Sanskrit Agni, in Latin z^7iis. In the 
worship which is paid to the Fire and in the 
high praises bestowed on Agni we can clearly 
perceive the traces of a period in the history 
of man in which not only the most essential com- 
forts of life, but life itself, depended on the know- 
ledge of producing fire. To us fire has become so 
familiar that we can hardly form an idea of what life 
would be without it. But how did the ancient 
dwellers on earth get command and possession of fire .'* 
The Vedic poets tell us that fire first came to them 
from the sky, in the form of lightning, but that it 
disappeared again, and that then M^tarijvan, a being 
to a certain extent like Promethus, brought it back 
and confided it to the safe keeping of the clan of the 
Bhrigus (Phlegyas)*. In other poems we hear of the 
mystery of fire being produced by rubbing pieces of 
wood ; and here it is a curious fact that the name of 
the wood thus used for rubbing is in Sanskrit Pra- 
mantha, a word which, as Kuhn has shown, would in 
Greek come very near to the name of Prometheus. The 
possession of fire, whether by preserving it as sacred on 

* Muir, iv. p. 209. 



VEDIC DBITJMS. 1 87 

the hearth, or by producing it at pleasure with the 
fire-drill, represents an enormous step in early civiliza- 
tion. It enabled people to cook their meat instead 
of eating ij: raw ; it gave them the power of carrying 
on their work by night; and in colder climates it 
really preserved them from being frozen to death. 
No wonder, therefore, that the fire should have been 
praised and worshipped as the best and kindest of 
gods, the only god who had come down from heaven 
to live on earth, the friend of man, the messenger of 
the gods, the mediator between gods and men, the 
immortal among mortals. He, it is said, protects 
the settlements of the Aryans, and frightens away 
the black-skinned enemies. 

Soon, however, fire was conceived by the Vedic 
poets under the more general character of light and 
warmth, and then the presence of Agni was perceived, 
not only on the hearth and the altar, but in the Dawn, 
in the Sun, and in the world beyond the Sun, while 
at the same time his power was recognized as ripen- 
ing, or as they called it, as cooking, the fruits of the 
earth, and as supporting also the warmth and the 
life of the human body. From that point of view 
Agni, like other powers, rose to the rank of a Supreme 
God.* He is said to have stretched out heaven and 
earth — naturally, because without his light heaven 
and earth would have been invisible and undistin- 
guishable. The next poet says that Agni held 
heaven aloft by his light, that he kept the two 
woilds asunder ; and in the end Agni is said to be 
the progenitor and father of heaven and earth, and 
the maker of all that flies, or walks, or stands, or 
moves on earth. 

Muir, iv, p. 214. 



l88 WHAT CAM INDIA TEACH l/Sf 

Here we have once more the same process before 
our eyes. The human mind begins with being startled 
by a single or repeated event, such as the lightning 
striking a tree and devouring a whole forest, or a 
spark of fire breaking forth from wood being rubbed 
against wood, whether in a forest, or in the wheel of 
a carriage, or at last in a fire-drill, devised on purpose. 
Man then begins to wonder at what to him is a 
miracle, none the less so because it is a fact, a simple 
natural fact. He sees the effect of a power, but he 
can only guess at its cause, and if he is to speak of 
it, he can only do so by speaking of it as an agent, or 
as something like a human agent, and, in some re- 
spects not quite human, in others more than human 
or super-human. Thus the concept of Fire grew, and 
while it became more and more generalised, it also 
became more sublime, more incomprehensible, more 
divine. Without Agni, without fire, light, and warmth, 
life would have been impossible. Hence he became 
the author and giver of life, of the life of plants and 
animals and of men ; and his favor having once been 
implored for "light and life and all things," what 
wonder that in the minds of some poets, and in the 
traditions of this or that village community, he should 
have been raised to the rank of a supreme ruler, a god 
above all gods, their own true god ! 

We now proceed to consider the powers which the 
ancient poets might have discovered in the air, in 
the clouds, and, more particularly, in those meteoric 
conflicts which by thunder, lightning, darkness, 
storms, and showers of rain must have taught man 
that very important lesson that he was not alone in 



VEDIC DEITIES. ig^ 

this world. Many philosophers, as you know, believe 
that all religion arose from fear or terror, and that 
without thunder and lightning to teach us, we should 
never have believed in any gods or god. This is a 
one-sided and exaggerated view. Thunderstorms, no 
doubt, had a large share in arousing feelings of awe 
and terror, and in making man conscious of his weak- 
ness and dejoendence. Even in the Veda Indra is 
introduced as saying : " Yes, when I send thunder and 
lightning, then you believe in me." But what we 
call religion would never have sprung from fear and 
terror alone. Religion is trust, and that trust arose 
in the beginning from the impressions made on the 
mind and heart of man by th,e order and wisdom of 
nature, and more particularly, by those regularly re- 
curring events, the return of the sun, the revival of 
the moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause 
and effect, gradually discovered in all things, and 
traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by 
whatever name we choose to call it. 

Still, the meteoric phenomena had, no doubt, their 
important share in the production of ancient deities ; 
and in the poems of the Vedic Rishis they naturally 
occupy a very prominent place. If we were asked 
who was the principal god of the Vedic period, we 
should probably, judging from the remains of that 
poetry which we possess, say it was Indra, the god 
of the blue sky, the Indian Zeus, the gatherer of the 
clouds, the giver of rain, the wielder of the thunder- 
bolt, the conqueror of darkness and of all the powers 
of darkness, the bringer of light, the source of fresh- 
ness, vigor, and life, the ruler and lord of the whole 
world. Indra is this, and much more in the Veda. 



I^o WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us f 

He is supreme in the hymns of many poets, and may 
have been so in the prayers addressed to him by 
many of the ancient septs or village communities in 
India. Compared with him the other gods are said 
to be decrepit old men. Heaven, the old Heaven, or 
Dyaus, formerly the father of all the gods, nay the 
father of Indra himself, bows before him, and the 
Earth trembles at his approach. Yet Indra never 
commanded the permanent allegiance of all the 'other 
gods, like Zeus and Jupiter ; nay, we know from the 
Veda itself that there were sceptics, even at that 
early time, who denied that there was any such thing 
as Indra*. 

By the side of Indra, and associated with him 
in his battles, and sometimes hardly distinguish- 
able from him, we find the representatives of the 
wind, called Vata or Vayu, and the more terrible 
Storm-gods, the Maruts, literally the Smashers. 

When speaking of the Wind, a poet says if " Where 
was he born ? Whence did he spring } the life of the 
gods, the germ of the world ! That god moves about 
where he listeth, his voices are heard, but he i-s not 
to be seen." 

The Maruts are more terrible than Vata, the wind. 
They are clearly the representatives of such storms as 
are known in India, when the air is darkened by dust 
and clouds, when in a moment the trees are stripped 
of their foliage, their branches shivered, their stems 
snapped, when the earth seems to reel and the moun- 
tains to shake, and the rivers are lashed into foam and 
fury. Then the poet sees the Maruts approaching 
with golden helmets, with spotted skins on their 

* Hibbert Lectures, p. 307. t X 168, 3, 4. 



VEDIC DEITIES. 



191 



shoulders, brandishing golden spears, whirling their 
axes, shooting fiery arrows, and cracking their whips 
amidst thunder and lightning. They are the comrades 
of Indra, sometimes, like Indra, the sons of Dyaus or 
the sky, but also the sons of another terrible god, 
called Rudra, or the Howler, a fighting god, to whom 
many hymns are addressed. In him a new character 
is inyolved, that of a healer and saviour, — a very 
natural transition in India, where nothing is so power- 
ful for dispelling miasmas, restoring health, and im- 
parting fresh vigor to man and beast, as a thunder- 
storm, following after weeks of heat and drought. 

All these and several others, such as Par^anya and 
the i^/bhus, are the gods of mid-air, the most active 
and dramatic gods, ever present to the fancy of the 
ancient poets, and in several cases the prototypes of 
later heroes, celebrated in the epic poems of India. 
In battles, more particularly, these fighting gods of 
the sky were constantly invoked.* Indra is the 
leader in battles, the protector of the bright Aryans, 
the destroyer of the black aboriginal inhabitants of 
India. " He has thrown down fifty thousand black 
fellows," the poet says, '* and their strongholds crumb- 
led away like an old rag." Strange to say, Indra is 
praised for having saved his people from their ene- 
mies, much as Jehovah was praised by the Jewish, 
prophets. Thus we read in one hymn that when 
Sudas, the pious king of the Tr^tsus, was pressed 
hard in his battle with the ten kings, Indra changed 
the flood into an easy ford, and thus saved Sudas. 

In another hymn we read ;f "Thou hast restrained 
the great river for the sake of Turviti Vayya : the 

* See Kaegi, Rig-veda, p. 61. t Rig-veda II. 13, 12 • IV. 19, 6. 



192 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us 1 

flood moved in obedience to thee, and thou madest 
the rivers easy to cross." This is not very different 
from the Psalmist (Ixxviii. 13): " He divided the 
sea, and caused them to pass through ; and he made 
the waters to stand as an heap." 

And there are other passages which have reminded 
some students of the Veda of Joshua's battle,* when 
the sun stood still and the moon stayed, until the 
people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. 
For we read in the Veda also, as Professor Kaegi has 
pointed out (1. c. p. 63), that " Indra lengthened the 
days into the night," and that " the Sun unharnessed 
its chariot in the middle of the day."t 

In some of the hymns addressed to Indra his 
original connection with the sky and the thunder- 
storm seems quite forgotten. He has become a 
spiritual god, the only king of all worlds and all 
people, X who sees and hears everything, § nay, who 
inspires men with their best thoughts. No one is 
equal to him, no one excels him. 

The name of Indra is peculiar to India, and must 
have been formed after the separation of the great 
Aryan family had taken place, for we find it neither in 
Greek, nor in Latin, nor in German. There are Vedic 
gods, as I mentioned before, whose names must have 
been framed before that separation, and which occur 
therefore, though greatly modified in character, some- 
times in Greek, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in the 
Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic dialects. Dyaus, for 
instance, is the same word as Zeus or Ju-piter, Ushas 
is Eos, Nakta is Nyx, Silrya is Helios, Agni is ignis 

* Joshua X. 13. t Rig-veda IV. 30 3 ; X. 138, 3. 

I L. c. VIII. IT, 3. § L. c. VIII, 78, 5. 



VEDIC DEITIES. 193 

Bhaga is Baga in Old Persian, Bogu. in Old Slavonic, 
Varu;^a is Uranos, Vata is Wotan, Va/^ is vox, and 
in the name of the ManitSy or the storm-gods, the 
germs of the Italic god of war. Mars, have been dis- 
covered. Besides these direct coincidences, some 
indirect relations have been established between 
Hermes and Sarameya, Dionysos and Dyunii-ya, 
Prometheus and Pramantha, Orpheus and i?fbhu, 
Erinnys and Sara;/yu, Pan, and Pavana. 

But while the name of Indra as the god of the sky, 
also as the god of the thunderstorm, and the giver of 
rain, is unknown among the Northwestern members 
of the Aryan family, the name of another god who 
sometimes acts the part of Indra (Indra/i^ Par^an- 
yatma), but is much less prominent in the Veda, I 
mean Par^anya, must have existed before that of 
Indra, because two at least of the Aryan languages 
have carried it, as we shall see, to Germany, and to 
the very shores of the Baltic. 

Sometimes this Par^anya stands in the place of Dy- 
aus, the sky. Thus we read in the Atharva-veda, XII. 
I, 12:* "The Earth is the mother, and I am the son 
of the Earth. Pa^anya is the father ; may he help 
us!" 

In another place (XII. i, 42) the Earth, instead of 
being the wife of Heaven or Dyaus, is called the wife 
of Par^anya. 

Now who or what is this Par^anya } There have 
been long controversies about him,f as to whether he 
is the same as Dyaus, Heaven, or the same as Indra, 

II * Muir, iv., p. 23. 

t Ibid. p. 142. An excellent paper on Pargranya was published by 
Biihler in 1862, "Orient und Occident," Vol. i., p. 214. 



194 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US? 



the successor of Dyaus, whether he is the god of the 
sky, of the cloud, or of the rain. 

To me it seems that this very expression, god of 
the sky, god of the cloud, is so entire an anachronism 
that we could not even translate it into Vedic Sans- 
krit without committing a solecism. It is true, no 
doubt, we must use our modern ways of speaking when 
we wish to represent the thoughts of the ancient world ; 
but we cannot be too much on our guard against ac- 
cepting the dictionary representative of an ancient 
word for its real counterpart. Deva, no doubt, means 
"gods" and "god," and Par^anya means "cloud," 
but no one could say in Sanskrit par^anyasya deva/^, 
" the god of the cloud.'' The god, or the divine or 
transcendental element, does not come from without, 
to be added to the sky or to the earth, but it springs 
from the cloud and the sky and the earth, and is 
slowly elaborated into an independent concept. As 
many words in ancient languages have an undefined 
meaning, and lend themselves to various purposes ac- 
cording to the various intentions of the speakers, the 
names of the gods also share in this elastic and plas- 
tic character of ancient speech. There are passages 
where Par^anya means cloud, there are passages where 
it means rain. There are passages where Par^anya 
takes the place which elsewhere is filled by Dyaus, 
the sky, or by Indra, the active god of the atmo- 
sphere. . This may seem very wrong and very unsci- 
entific to the scientific mythologist. But it cannot 
be helped. It is the nature of ancient thought and 
ancient language to be unscientific, and we must 
learn to master it as well as we can, instead of finding 



vEDic deities: 1^5 

fault with it, and complaining that our forefathers did 
not reason exactly as we do. 

There are passages in the Vedic hymns where Par- 
^nya appears as a supreme god. He is called 
father, like Dyaus, the sky. He is called asura, the 
living or life-giving god, a name peculiar to the oldest 
and the greatest gods. One poet says,* " He rules" 
as god over the whole world ; all creatures rest in 
him ; he is the life (atma) of all that moves and 
rests." 

Surely it is difficult to say more of a supreme god 
than what is here said of Par^anya. Yet in other 
hymns he is represented as performing his office, 
namely that of sending rain upon the earth, under 
the control of Mitra and Varu/^a, who are then con- 
sidered as the highest lords, the mightiest rulers of 
heaven and earth. f 

There are other verses, again, where par^anya 
occurs with hardly any traces of personality, but 
simply as a name of cloud or rain. 

Thus we read : % " Even by day the Maruts (the 
storm-gods) produce darkness with the cloud that 
carries water, when they moisten the earth." Here 
cloud is par^^anya, and it is evidently used as an 
appellative, and not as a proper name. The same 
word occurs in the plural also, and we read of many 
par^anyas or clouds vivifying the earth. § 

When Devapi prays for rain in favor of his brother, 
he says: || " O lord of my prayer (Br^haspati), whether 
thou be Mitra or Varu?^a or Pushan, come to my 

* Rig-veda, VII. loi, 6. flbid V. 6^, 3-6. t L- c. I. 38, 9. 
§ L. c. I. 164, 51. II L. c. X. 9S, I. 



ig6 IVHA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

sacrifice ! Whether thou be together with the Adi- 
tyas, the Vasus or the Maruts, let the cloud (par- 
^anya) rain for Santanu." 

And again : " Stir up the rainy cloud " (par^anya). 

In several places it makes no difference whether we 
translate par^nya by cloud or by rain, for those who 
pray for rain, pray for the cloud, and whatever may be 
the benefits of the rain, they may nearly all be called 
ihe benefits of the cloud. There is a curious hymn, 
for instance, addressed to the frogs who, at the be- 
ginning of the rains, come forth from the dry ponds, 
and embrace each other and chatter together, and 
whom the poet compares to priests singing at a 
sacrifice, a not very complimentary remark from a 
poet who is himself supposed to have been a priest. 
Their voice is said to have been revived by par^anya, 
which we shall naturally translate " by rain," though, 
no doubt, the poet may have meant, for all we know, 
either a cloud, or even the god Par^nya himself. 

I shall try to translate one of the hymns addressed 
to Par^anya, when conceived as a god, or at least as so 
much of a god as it was possible to be at that stage 
in the intellectual growth of the human race. * 

1. " Invoke the strong god with these songs ! praise 
Par^anya, worship him with veneration ! for he, the 
roaring bull, scattering drops, gives seed-fruit to 
plants. 

2. " H^ cuts the trees asunder, he kills evil spirits ; 
the whole world trembles before his mighty weapon. 
Even the guiltless flees before the powerful, when 
Par^anya thundering strikes down the evil-doers. 

* Rig-veda V. 83. See Buhler, Orient und Occident, vol. i., p. 
214 ; Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 43. 



VEDIC DEITIES. i ^ y 

3. " Like a charioteer, striking his horses with a 
whip, he puts forth his messengers of rain. From 
afar arise the roaring of the lion, when Par^anya 
makes the sky full of rain. 

4. " The winds blow, the lightnings * ' fly, plants 
spring up, the sky pours. Food is produced for the 
whole world, when Par^anya blesses the earth, with 
his seed. 

5. " O Par^anya, thou at whose work the earth 
bows down, thou at whose work hoofed animals are 
scattered, thou at whose work the plants assume all 
forms, grant thou to us thy great protection ! 

6. " O Maruts, give us the rain of heaven, make the 
streams of the strong horse run down ! And come 
thou hither with thy thunder, pouring out water, for 
thou (O Par^anya) art the living god, thou art our 
father. 

7. " Do thou roar, and thunder, and give fruitful- 
ness ! Fly around us with thy chariot full of water ! 
Draw forth thy water-skin, when it has been opened 
and turned downward, and let the high and the low 
places become level ! 

8. " Draw up the large bucket, and pour it out ; let 
the streams pour forth freely ! Soak heaven and 
earth with fatness ! and let there be a good draught 
for the cows ! 

9. " O Par^anya,Vhen roaring and thundering thou 
killest the evil-doers, then everything rejoices, what- 
ever lives on earth. 

10. "Thou hast sent rain, stop now! Thou hast 

*Both Biihler (Orient und Occident, vol. i, p. 224) and Zimmer 
(Z. f. D. A. vii, p. 169) say that the lightning is represented as the 
spn of Par^anya in Rig-veda VII. loi, i. This seems doubtful, 



I g$ WHA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US f 

made th§ deserts passable, thou hast made plsant 
grow for food, and thou hast obtained praise from 
men." 

This is a Vedic hymn, and a very fair specimen of 
what these" ancient hymns are. There is nothing 
very grand and poetical about them, and yet, I say, 
take thousands and thousands of people living in our 
villages, and depending on rain for their very life, and 
not many of them will be able to compose such a 
prayer for rain, even though three thousand years have 
passed over our heads since Par^anya was first in- 
voked in India. Nor are these verses entirely without 
poetical conceptions and descriptions. Whoever has 
watched a real thunderstorm in a hot climate, will re- 
cognize the truth of those quick sentences, " the 
winds blow, the lightnings fly, plants spring up, the 
hoofed cattle are scattered." Nor is the idea without 
a certain drastic reality, that Par^anya draws a bucket 
of water from his well in heaven, and pours out skin 
after skin (in which water was then carried) down 
upon the earth. 

There is even a moral sentiment perceptible in this 
hymn. " When the storms roar and the lightnings 
flash and the rain pours down, even the guiltless 
trembles, and evildoers are struck down." Here we 
clearly see that the poet did not look upon the storm 
simply as as outbreak of the violence of nature, but 
that he had a presentiment of a higher will and 
power which even the guiltless fears ; for who, he 
seems to say, is entirely free from guilt .^ 

If now we ask again. Who is^Par^anya 1 or What is 
Par^nya "^ we can answer that Par^anya was meant 
originally for the cloud, so far as it gives rain ; but as 



soon as the idea of a giver arose, the visible cloud 
became the outward appearance only, or the body of 
that giver, and the giver himself was somewhere else, 
we know not where. In some verses Par^anya seems 
to step into the place of Dyaus, the sky, and Pnthivi, 
the earth, is his wife. In other places *, however, he 
is the son of Dyaus or the sky, though no thought 
is given in that early stage to the fact that thus 
Par^anya might seem to be the husband of his 
mother. We saw that even the idea of Indra being 
the father of his own father did not startle the 
ancient poets beyond an exclamation that it was a 
very wonderful thing indeed. 

Sometimes Par^anya does the work of Indra,f the 
Jupiter Pluvius of the Veda; sometimes of Vayu, the 
wind, sometimes of Soma, the giver of rain. Yet 
with all this he is not Dyaus, nor Indra, nor the 
Maruts, nor Vayu, nor Soma. He stands by himself, 
a separate person, a separate god, as we should say — 
nay, one of the oldest of all the Aryan gods. 

His name, par^anya, is derived from a root par^, 
which, like its parallel forms par.r and parsh, must 
(I think) have had the meaning of sprinkling, irri- 
gating, moistening. An interchange between final g, 
J, and sh may, no doubt, seem unusual, but it is not 
without parallel in Sanskrit. We have, for instance, 
the roots pi^^, pingere ; pish, to rub ; pij, to adorn 
(as in pei-as, 7roz:^zAo?^ etc.) ; xarigy to rub, m^^'sh, to 
rub out, to forget ; mm, mulcere. 

This very root mn]g forms its participle as m;2sh-/a, 
like ya^, ish^a, and vij, vish/a ; nay there are roots, 

* Rig-veda VII. 102. i. * Ibid. VIII. 6, i. 



2 00 ^^^ T CAN INDIA TMA CH t/S f 

such as drub, which optionally take a final lingual ot" 
guttural, such as dhru/' and dhruk. * 

We may therefore compare par^ in par^anya with 
such words as pnshata, pnshati, speckled, drop of 
water ; f also pari-u, cloud, pmni, speckled, cloud, 
earth ; and in Greek Ttpo^^Go), nefiKvo^y etc. % 

If derived from par^^ to sprinkle, Par^anya would 
have meant originally " he who irrigates or gives rain."§ 

When the different members of the Aryan family 
dispersed, the}' might all of them, Hindus as well as 
Greeks and Celts, and Teutons and Slaves, have 
carried that name for cloud with them. But you 
know that it happened very often that out of the 
common wealth of their ancient language, one and the 
same word was preserved, as the case might be, not 
by all, but by only six, or five, or four, or three, or 
two, or even by one only of the seven principal heirs ; 
and yet, as we know that there was no historical 
contact between them, after they had once parted 
from each other, long before the beginning of what 
we call history, the fact that two of the Aryan lan- 
guages have preserved the same finished word with 
the same finished meaning, is proof sufficient that 
it belonged to the most ancient treasure of Aryan 
thought. 

Now there is no trace, at least no very clear trace> 

* See Max Miiller, Sanskrit Grammar, § 174, 10. 

t Cf. Gobh. Grzliya S. III. 3, 15, vidyut — stanayitnu — ps^/shiteshu. 

X U^valadatta, in his commentary on the Uwadi-sHtras, iii, 193, 
admits the same transition of sh into g in the verb pmh, as the 
etymon of par^anya. 

§ For different etymologies, see Biihler, Orient und Occident, i, 
p. 214 ; Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, v, p. 140 ; Grassmann, in his 
Dictionary to the Rig- Veda, s. v. j Zimmer, Zeitichrift fur Deutsches 
Alterthum, Neue Folge, vii. p. 164. 



VEDIC DEITIES. 201 

of Par^nya, in Greek or Latin or Celtic, or even in 
Teutonic. In Slavonic, too, we look in vain, till we 
come to that almost forgotten side-branch called the 
Lettic, comprising the spoken Litimnian and Lettish^ 
and the now extinct Old Prussian. Lituania is no 
longer an independent state, but it was once, not 
more than six centuries ago, a Grand Duchy, inde- 
pendent both of Russia and Poland. Its first Grand 
Duke was Ringold, who ruled from 1235, and his 
successors made successful conquests against the 
Russians. In 1368 these grand dukes became kings 
of Poland, and in 1569 the two countries were united. 
When Poland was divided between Russia and I^russia, 
part of Lituania fell to the former, part to the latter. 
There are still about one million and a half of people 
who speak Lituania in Russia and Prussia, while 
Lettish is spoken by about one million in Curland 
and Livonia. 

The Lituanian language, even as it is now spoken 
by the common people, contains some extremely- 
primitive grammatical forms — in some cases almost 
identical with Sanskrit. These forms are all the 
more curious, because they are but few in number, 
and the rest of the language has suffered much from 
the wear and tear of centuries. '^ 

Now m that remote Lituanian language we ftnd 
that our old friend Par^anya has taken refuge. 
There he lives to the present day, while even in 
India he is almost forgotten, at least in the spoken 
languages ; and there, in Lituania, not many cen- 
turies back might be heard among a Christianized 
or nearly Christianized people, prayers for rain,f;;ftot 
very different from that which I translated to,;^ou 



202 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

from the Rig-veda. In Lituanian the god of thunder 
was called Perktinas * and the same word is still 
used in the sense of thunder. In Old Prussian. 
thwiiidQv vf?iS perctmos, and in Lettish to the present 
didij perkons is thunder, god of thunder, f 

It was, I believe, Grimm who for the first time 
identified the Vedic Par^anya with the Old Slavonic 
Perun, the Polish Piorun, the Bohemian Peraun. 
These words had formally been derived by Dobrowsky 
and others from the root peru, I strike. Grimm 
(Teutonic Mythology, Engl, transl., p. 171) showed 
that the fuller forms Perkunas, Pehrkons, and Per- 
kunos existed in Lituanian, Lettish, Old Prussian, 
and that even the Mordvinians had adopted the 
name Porguini as that of their thunder-god. 

Simon Grunau, who finished his chronicle in 1521, 
speaks of three gods, as worshipped by the Old Prus- 
sians, Patollo, Patrimpo, and Perkuno, and he states 
that Perkuno was invoked " for storm's sake, that they 
might have rain and fair weather at the proper time, 
and thunder and lightening should not injure them." J 

The following Lituanian prayer has been preserved 
to us by Lasitzki : § 

; * In order to identify Perkunas with par^anya, we must go 
another step backward, and look upon^ or g , in the root parg ; as a 
weakening of an orginal k in park. This, however, is a frequent 
phonetic process. See Biihler, in Benfey's Orient und Occident, 

f... t Lituanian perkun-kulke, thunder-bolt, perkuno gaisis, storm. 
See Voelkel, Die lettischen Sprachreste, 1879, P* 23. 
"t " Perkuno, war der dritte Abgot und man in anruffte limbs 
gewitters willen, domit sie Regen hatten und schon wetter zu 
seiner Zeit, und in der Donner und blix kein schaden thett." Cf. 
" Gottesides bei den alten Preussen," Berlin, 1870, p. 23. The triad 
of the gods is called Triburti, Tryboze ; 1. c. p. 29. 

§Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, p. 175 ; and Lasitzki (Lasicius^ 



VEDIC DEITIES. 



203 



"Check thyself, O Percuna, and do not send mis- 
fortune on my field ! and I shall give thee this flitch." 

Among the neighbors of the Lets, the Esthonians, 
who, though un-Aryan in language, have evidently 
learnt much from their Aryan neighbors, the follow- 
ing prayer was heard, "^ addressed by an old peasant 
to their god Picker or Pickejt, the god of thunder and 
rain, as late as the seventeenth century : f 

" Dear Thunder (woda Picker), we offer to thee an 
ox that has two horns and four cloven hoofs ; we 
would pray thee for our ploughing and sowing, that 
our straw be copper-red, our grain golden-yellow. 
Push elsewhere all the thick black clouds, over 
great fens, high forests, and wildernesses. But unto 
us, ploughers and sowers, give a fruitful season and 
sweet rain. Holy Thunder (poha Picken), guard our 
seed-field, that it bear good straw below, good ears" 
above, and good grain within, if" 

Now, I say again, I do not wish you to admire 
this primitive poetry^ primitive whether it is repeated 
in the Esthonian fens in the seventeenth century of 
our era, or sung in the valley of the Indus in the 
seventeenth century before our era. Let aesthetic 
critics say what they like about these uncouth poems. 
I only ask you, Is it not worth a great many poems, 

Joannes, De Russorum, Moscovitarum et Tartarorum religione, 
sacrificiis, nuptiarum et funerum ritu, Spirse Nemetum, 1582 ; idem, 
De Diis Samagitarum. 

* Grimm, 1. c. p. 176, quoting from Joh. Gutslaff, Kurzer Bericht 
und Unterricht von der falsch heilig genandten bache in Liefland 
Wohhanda, Dorpat, 1644, pp. 362 — 364. 

t In modern Esthonian Pitkne, the Finnish Pitcainen( ?). 
X On foreign influences in Esthonian stories, see Ehstnische 
Marchen, vonT. Kreutzwald, 1869, Vorw®rt (by Schiefner), p. iv. 



204 



WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 7 



to have established this fact, that the same god 
Par^nya, the god of clouds and thunder and light- 
ning and rain, who was invoked in India a thousand 
years before India was discovered by Alexander, 
should have been remembered and believed in by 
Lituanian peasants on the frontier between East 
Prussia and Russia, not more than two hundred 
years ago, and should have retained its old name 
Par^anya, which in Sanskrit meant ''showering,'' under 
the form of Perkuna, v/hich in Lituanian is a name 
and a name only, without any etymological meaning at 
all ; nay, should live on, as some scholars assure us, 
in an abbreviated form in most Slavonic dialects, 
namely, in Old Slavonic as Penin, in Polish as Pioriin^ 
in Bohemian as PerauUy all meaning thunder or 
thunder-storm ? 

Such facts strike me as if we saw the blood 
suddenly beginning to flow again through the veins 
of old mummies ; or as if the Egyptian statues of 
black granite were suddenly to begin to speak again. 
Touched by the rays of modern science the old words — 
call them mummies or statues — begin indeed to live 
again, the old names of gods and heroes begin indeed 
to speak again. All that is old becomes new, all that 
is new becomes old, and that one word, Par^anya, 
se«ms, like a charm, to open before our eyes the cave 
or cottage in which the fathers of the Aryan race, our 
own fathers, — whether we live on the Baltic or on the 
Indian Ocean, — are seen gathered together, taking 
refuge from the buckets of Par^anya, and saying : 
" Stop now, Par^anya ; thou hast sent rain ; thou hast 



VED/C DEI TIBS. 2 0^ 

tliade the deserts passable, and hast made the plants 
to grow ; and thou hast obtained praise from man." 

We have still to consider the third class of gods, in 
addition to the gods of the earth and the sky, namely 
the gods of the highest heaven, more serene in their 
character than the active and fighting gods of the air 
and the clouds, and more remote from the eyes of 
man, and therefore more mysterious in the exercise 
of their power than the gods of the earth or the air. 

The principal deity is here no doubt the bright 
sky itself, the old Dyaus, worshipped as we know 
by the Aryans before they broke up into separate 
people and languages, and surviving in Greece as 
Zeus, in Italy as Jupiter, Heaven-father, and among 
the Teutonic tribes as Tyr and Tiic. In the Veda we 
saw him chiefly invoked in connection with the earth, 
as Dyava-pr/thivi, Heaven and earth. He is invoked 
by himself also, but he is a vanishing god, and his 
place is taken in most of the Vedic poems by the 
younger and more active god, Indra, 

Another representative of the highest heaven, as 
covering, embracing, and shielding all things, is Var- 
u;2a, a name derived from the root var, to cover, and 
identical with the Greek Oitraiios. This god is one of 
the most interesting creations of the Hindu mind, be- 
cause though we can still perceive the physical back- 
ground from which he rises, the vast, starry, brilliant 
expanse above, his features, more than those of any of 
the Vedic gods, have become completely transfigured, 
and he stands before us as a god who watches over 
the world, punishes the evil-doer, and even forgives 
the sins of those who implore his pardon, ^ 



2o6 P^^^A T CAN- INDIA TEACH US ? 

I shall read you one of the hymns addressed to 
him : * 

" Let us be blessed in thy service, O Varu;^a, for 
vve always think of thee and praise thee, greeting thee 
day by day, like the fires lighted on the altar, at the 
approach of the rich dawns." 2. 

" O Varu;2a, our guide, let us stand in thy keeping, 
thou who art rich in heroes and praised far and wide ! 
And you, unconquered sons of Adita, deign to accept 
us as your friends, O gods ! 3. 

" Aditya, the ruler, sent forth these rivers ; they 
follow the law of Varu7/a. They tire not, they cease 
not ; like birds they fly quickly everywhere." 4. 

"Take from me my sin, like a fetter, and v/e shall 
increase, O Varu/^a, the spring of thy law. Let not 
the thread be cut while I weave my song ! Let not 
the form of the workman break before the time ! 5. 

" Take far away from me this terror, O Varu^a ! 
Thou, O righteous king, have mercy on me ! Like as 
a rope from a calf, remove from me my sin ; for away 
from thee I am not master even of the twinkling of an 
eye. 6. 

"Do not strike us, Varu/^a, with weapons which at 
thy will hurt the evil-doer. Let us not go where the 
light has vanished ! Scatter our enemies, that we 
may live. 7. 

" We did formerly, O Varu;/a, and do now, and 
shall in future also, sing praises to thee, O mighty 
one ! For on thee, unconquerable hero, rest all stat- 
utes, immovable, as if established on a rock. 8. 

'* Move far away from me all self-committed guilt, 
and may I not, O king, suffer for what others have 
* Rig-veda II. 28. 



VM bic DR triES. 1 f 

committed ! Many dawns have not yet dawned ; 
grant us to live in them, O Varn/^a." 9, 

You may have observed that in several verses of 
this hymn Varu;^a was called Aditya, or son of Aditi. 
Now Aditi means mjinitude, from dita, bound, and a^ 
not, that is, not bound, not limited, absolute, infinite. 
Aditi. itself is now and then invoked in the Veda, as 
the Beyond, as what is beyond the earth and the 
sky, and the sun and the dawn, a most surprising con- 
ception in that early period of religious thought. 
More frequently, however, than Aditi, we meet with 
the Adityas, literally the sons of Aditi, or the gods 
beyond the visible earth and sky, — in one sense, the 
infinite gods. One of them is Varu;2a, others Mitra 
and Aryaman (Bhaga, Daksha, A^/^sa), most of them 
abstract names, though pointing to heaven and the 
solar light of heaven as their first, though almost for- 
gotten source. 

When Mitra and Varu/^a are invoked together, we 
can still perceive dimly that they were meant origi- 
nally for day and night, light and darkness. But in 
their more personal and so to say dramatic aspect, 
day and night appear in the Vedic mythology as the 
two Aj-vins, the two horsemen. 

Aditi, too, the infinite, still shows a few traces of 
her being originally connected with the boundless 
Dawn ; but again, in 'her more personal and dramatic 
character, the Dawn is praised by the Vedic poets as 
Ushas, the Greek Eos, the beautiful maid of the 
morning, loved by the A.$-vins, loved by the son, but 
vanishing before him at the very moment when he 
tries to embrace her with his golden rays. The sun 
himself, whom we saw reflected several times before 



2oS What CAN INDIA Teach Vs^ 

in some of the divine personifications of the air and 
the sky and even of the earth, appears once more in 
his full personality, as the sun of the sky, under the 
names of Silrya (Helios), Savitr/, Pushan, andVishwu, 
and many more. 

You see from all this how great a mistake it 
would be to attempt to reduce the whole of Aryan 
Mythology to solar concepts, and to solar concepts 
only. We have seen how largely the earth, the air, 
and the sky have each contributed their share to the 
earliest religious and mythological treasury of the 
Vedic Aryans. Nevertheless, the Sun occupied in 
that ancient collection of Aryan thought, which we 
call Mythology, the same central and commanding 
position which, under different names, it still holds in 
our own thoughts. 

What we call the Morning the ancient Aryans called 
the Sun or the Dawn ; " and there is no solemnity 
so deep to a rightly thinking creature as that of 
the Dawn." (These are not my words, but the words 
of one of our greatest poets, one of the truest 
worshippers of Nature — John Ruskin.) What we 
call Noon, and Evening, and Night, what we call 
Spring and Winter, what we call Year, and Time, 
and Life, and Eternity — all this the ancient Aryans 
called Sun. And yet wise people wonder and say, 
how curious that the ancient ' Aryans should have 
had so many solar myths. Why, every time we 
say " Good Morning," we commit a solar myth. Every 
poet who sings about " the May driving the Winter 
from the fields again " commits a solar myth. Every 
"Christmas Number" of our newspapers — ringing out 
the old year and ringing in the new— is brimful of 



VEDIC DEITIES. 209 

solar myths. Be not afraid of solar myths, but when- 
ever in ancient mythology, you meet with a name 
that, according to the strictest phonetic rules (for 
this is a sine qua fion), can be traced back to a 
word meaning sun, or dawn, or morning or night, 
or spring or winter, accept it for what it was meant 
to be, and do not be greatly surprised, if a story told 
of a solar eponymos was originally a solar myth. 

No one has more strongly protested against the ex- 
travagances of Comparative Mythologists in changing 
everything into solar legends, than I have; but if I 
read some of the arguments brought forward against 
this new science, I confess they remind me of nothing 
so much as of the arguments brought forward, centuries 
ago, against the existence of Antipodes ! People then 
appealed to what is called Common Sense, which 
ought to teach everybody that Antipodes could not 
possibly exist, because they would tumble off. The 
best answer that astronomers could give, was, " Go 
and see." And I can give no better answer to those 
learned sceptics who try to ridicule the Science of 
Comparative Mythology — " Go and see ! " that is, go 
and read the Veda, and before you have finished the 
first Ma?2<^ala, I can promise you, you will no longer 
shake your wise heads at solar myths, whether in 
India, or in Gfeece, or in Italy, or even in England, 
where we see so little of the sun, and talk all the 
more about the weather — that is, about a solar myth. 

We have thus seen from the hymns and prayers 
preserved to us in the Rig-veda, how a large number 
of so-called Devas, bright and sunny beings, or gods, 
were called int© existence, how the whole world was 
peopled with them, and every act of nature, whether 



210 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf 

on the earth or in the air or in the highest heaven, 
ascribed to their agency. When we say, it thunders, 
they said Indra thunders ; when we say, it rains, they 
said Par^anya pours out his buckets ; when we say, 
it dawns, they said the beautiful Ushas appears like 
a dancer, displaying her splendor ; when we say, 
it grows dark, they said Surya unharnesses his steeds. 
The whole of nature was alive to the poets of the 
Veda, the presence of the gods was felt everywhere, 
and in that sentiment of the presence of the gods 
there was a germ of religious morality, sufficiently 
strong, it would seem, to restrain people from commit- 
ting as it were before the eyes of their gods what 
they were ashamed to commit before the eyes of men. 
When speaking of Varu/^a, the old god of the sky, 
one poet says : * 

" Varu;/a, the great lord of these worlds, sees as 
if he were near. If a man stands or walks or hides, 
if he goes to lie down, or to get up, what two people 
sitting together whisper to each other. King Varu;/a 
knows it, he is there as the third. f This earth, too, 
belongs to Varu/^a, the King, and this wide sky with 
its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky and the 
ocean) are Varu/m's loins ; he is also contained in 
this small drop of water. He who should flee far 
beyond the sky, even he would not be rid of Varu/^a, 
the King.J His spies proceed from heaven towards 

* Atharva-veda IV. i6. 

t Psalm cxxxix. i, 2, " O Lord, thou hast searched me and known 
me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou under- 
standest my thought afar off." 

% Psalm cxxxix. 9, " If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell 
in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, 
and thy right hand shall hold me." - - ■ 



VEDIC DEITIES. 2 1 1 

this world ; with thousand eyes they overlook this 
earth. King Varuwa sees all this, what is between 
heaven and earth, and what is beyond. He has 
counted the twinklings of the eyes of men. As a 
player throws down the dice, he settles all things 
(irrevocably). May all thy fatal snares which stand 
spread out seven by seven and threefold, catch the 
man who tells a lie, may they pass by him who speaks 
the truth." 

You see this is as beautiful, and in some respects 
as true, as anything in the Psalms. And yet we 
know that there never was such a Deva, or god, or 
such a thing as Varuf/a. We know it is a mere 
name, meaning originally '' covering or all-embracing," 
which was applied to the visible starry sky, and 
afterwards, by a process perfectly intelligible, de- 
veloped into the name of a Being, endowed with 
human and superhuman qualities. 

And what applies to Varu;^a applies to all the 
other gods of theveda and the Vedic rehgion, whether 
three in number, or thirty three, or as one poet said. 
" three thousand three hundred and thirty-nine gods." ^ 
They are all but names, quite as much as Jupiter 
and Apollo and Minerva ; in fact, quite as much as all 
the gods of every religion who are called by such ap- 
pellative titles. 

Possibly, if any one had said this during the Vedic 
age in India, or even during the Periklean age in 
Greece, he would have been called, like Sokrates, a 
blasphemer or an atheist. And yet nothing can be 
clearer or truer, and we shall see that some of the 

* Rig-veda III. 9, 9 ; X, 25, 6. 



2 1 2 WIIA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US t 

poets of the Veda too, and, still more, the later Vedan- 
tic philosopher, had a clear insight that it was so. 

Only let us be careful in the use of that phrase 
" it is a mere name." No name is a mere name. 
Every name was originally meant for something ; only 
it often failed to express what it was meant to express, 
and then became a weak or an empty name, or what 
we call " a mere name." So it was with these names 
of the Vedic gods. They were all meant to express the 
Beyond, the Invisible behind the Visible, the Infinite 
within the Finite, the Supernatural above the Natural, 
the Divine, omnipresent, and omnipotent. They failed 
in expressing what, by its very nature, must always 
remain inexpressible. But that Inexpressible itself re- 
mained, and in spite of all these failures, it never suc- 
cumbed, or vanished from the mind of the ancient 
thinkers and poets, but always called for new and better 
names, nay calls for them even now, and will call for 
them to the very end of man's existence upon earth. 



btha anb bthanta. 



I DO not wonder that I should have been asked by 
some of my hearers to devote part of my last lecture 
to answering the question, how the Vedic literature 
could have been composed and preserved, if writing 
was unknown in India before 500 b. c, while the 
hymns of the Rig-veda are said to date from 1500 B.C. 
Classical scholars naturally ask what is the date of 
our oldest MSS. of the Rig-veda, and what is the 
evidence on which so high an antiquity is assigned 
to its contents. I shall try to answer this question 
as well as I can, and I shall begin with a humble 
confession that the oldest MSS. of the Rig-veda, 
known to us at the present, date not from 1500 b. c, 
but from about 1500 a.d. 

We have therefore a gap of three thousand years, 
which it will require a strong arch of argument to 
bridge over. 

But that is not all. 

You may know how, in the beginning of .this cen» 
tury, when the age of the Homeric poems was dis- 
cussed, a German scholar, Frederick August Wolf, 
asked two momentous questions : — 

I. At what time did the Greeks first become 
acquainted with the alphabet and use it for inscrip- 



214 ^^^^ ^ ^^^ INDIA TEA CH US f 

tions on public monuments, coins, shields, and for 
contracts, both pubhc and private ?* 

2. At what time did the Greeks first think of using 
writing for literary purposes, and what materials did 
they employ for that purpose ? 

These two questions and the answers they elicited 
threw quite a new light on the nebulous fi^riods of 
Greek literature. A fact more firmly established 
than any other in the ancient history of Greece is 
that the lonians learnt the alphabet from the 
Phenicians. The lonians always called their letters 
Phenician letters,! and the very name of Alphabet 
was a Phenician word. We can well understand 
that the Phenicians should have taught the lonians 
in Asia Minor a knowledge of the alphabet, partly 
for commercial purposes, i. e. for making contracts, 
partly for enabling them, to use those useful little 
sheets, called Periphis or Circumnavigations, which 
at that time were as precious to sailors as maps 
were to the adventurous seamen of the middle ages. 
But from that to a written Hterature, in our sense 
of the word, there is still a wide step. It is well 
known that the Germans, particularly in the North, 
had their Runes for inscriptions on tombs, goblets, 
pubUc monuments, but not for literary purposes. % 
Even if a few lonians at Miletus and other centres 
of poUtical and commercial life acquired the art of 

* On the early use of letters for public inscriptions, see Haymaii, 
Journal of Fhilology, 1879, PP- ^i, 142, 150; Hicks, Manual of 
Greek Historical Inscriptions, pp. i seqq. 

t Herod, (v. 59) says : " I saw Phenician letters on certain 
tripods in a temple of the Israenian Apollo at Thebes in Boeotia, the 
most of them like the Ionian letters." 

X Munch, Die Norisch Germanischen Volker, p. 240. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 215 

writing, where could they find writing materials ? and, 
still more important, where could they find readers ? 
The lonians, when they began to write, had to be satis- 
fied with a hide or pieces of leather, which they called 
diphthera, and until that was brought to the perfection 
of vellum or parchment, the occupation of an author 
cannot have been very agreeable.* 

So far as we know at present the lonians began to 
write about the middle of the sixth century b. c. ; and, 
whatever may have been said to the contrary. Wolf's 
dictum stills holds good* that with them the beginning 
of a written literature was the same as the beginning 
of prose writing. 

Writing at that time was an effort, and such an 
effort was made for some great purpose only. Hence 
the first written skins were what we should call 
Murray's Handbooks, called Periegesis or Periodos 
or, if treating of sea- voyages, Periplus, that is, guide- 
books, books to lead travellers round a country 
or round a town. Connected with these itineraries 
were the accounts of the foundations of cities, the 
Ktisis. Such books existed in Asia Minor during 
the sixth and fifth centuries, and their writers were 
called by a general term, Logogj^aphi, or Xoyiot or 
XoyoTtoioi as opposed to aoidoi, the poets. They 
were the forerunners of the Greek historians, and 
Herodotus (444 B.C.), the so-called father of history, 
made frequent use of their works. 

* Herod, (v. 58) says : " The lonians from of old call 

, because once, in default of the former, they used to employ 
the latter. And even down to my own time, many of the barbarians 
write on such diphtherae." 

+ Hekatfeos and Kadmos of Miletos (520 b. c), Charon of 
Lampsakos (504 B.C.), Xanthos the Lydian (463B.C.), Pherekyde«| 
of I^eros (4S0 B, c), I^ellanikos of Mitylene (450 b, c), etQr 



2 1 Q WHA T CAN INDIA TEA CH US 9 

The whole of this incipient literary activity be- 
longed to Asia Minor. From " Guides through towns 
and countries," literature seems to have spread at an 
early time to Guides through life, or philosophical 
dicta, such as are ascribed to Anaximander the 
Ionian (610-547 B. c. *), and Pherekydes the Syrian 
(540 B. c). These names carry us into the broad day- 
light of history, for Anaximander was the teacher of 
Anaximenes, Anaximenes of Anaxagoras, and Anaxa- 
goras of Perikles. At that time writing was a recog- 
nized art, and its cultivation had been rendered pos- 
sible chiefly through trade with Egypt and the impor- 
tation oipapyros. In the time of ^schylos (500 B.C.) 
the idea of writing had become so familiar that he could 
use it again and again in poetical metaphors, f and 
there seems little reason why we should doubt that both 
Peisistratos (528 B.C.) and Polykrates of Samos (523 
B.C.) were among the first collectors of Greek manu-, 
scripts. 

In this manner the simple questions asked by Wolf 
helped to reduce the history of ancient Greek litera- 
ture to some kind of order, particularly with reference 
to its first beginnings. 

It would therefore seem but reasonable that the 
two first questions to be asked by the students of 
Sanskrit literature should have been : — 

1. At what time did the people of India become ac- 
quainted with an alphabet ? 

2. At what time did they first use such alphabet for 
literary purposes ? 

Curiously enough, however, these questions re- 

* Lewis, Astronomy, p. 92. 

t Se? Hayman, Journal of Fhilology, 1879, P* I39« 



VEDA AND VEDA NT A. 217 

mained in abeyance for a long time, and, as a 
consequence, it was impossible to introduce even the 
first elements of order into the chaos of ancient Sans- 
krit literature.* 

I can here state a few facts only. There are no in- 
scriptions to be found anywhere in India before the 
middle of the third century B.C. These inscriptions 
are Buddhist, put up during the reign of Ai-oka, the 
grandson of iTandragupta, who was the contemporary 
of Seleucus, and at whose court in Patalibothra Me- 
gasthenes lived as ambassador of Seleucus. Here, as 
you see, we are on historical ground. In fact, there is 
little^ doubt that Ajoka, the king who put up these in- 
scriptions in several parts of his vast kingdom, reigned 
from 259-222 B. c. 

These inscriptions are written in two alphabets — 
one written from right to left, and clearly derived from 
an Aramaean, that is, a Semitic alphabet ; the other 
written from left to right, and clearly an adaptation 
and an artificial or systematic adaptation, of a Semitic 
alphabet to the requirements of an Indian language. 
That second alphabet became the source of all Indian 
alphabets, and of many alphabets carried chiefly by 
Buddhist teachers far beyond the limits of India, 
though it is possible that the earliest Tamil alphabet 
may have been directly derived from the same Semi- 
tic source which supplied both the dextrorsttm and the 
sinistrorsum alphabets of India. 

Here then we have the first fact, viz. that writing, 
even for monumental purposes, was unknown iji India 
before the third century B.C. 

* See M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 497 
seqq., " On the Introduction of Writing in India." 



2i8 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 1 

But writing for commercial purposes was known 
in India before that time. Megasthenes was no 
douBt quite right when he said that the Indians did 
not know letters,* that their laws were not written, 
and that they administered justice from memory. 
But Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, 
who sailed down the Indus (325 B.C.), and was therefore 
brought in contact with the merchants frequenting 
the maritime stations of India, was probably equally 
right in declaring that " the Indians wrote letters on 
cotton that had been well beaten together." These were 
no doubt commercial documents, contracts, it may be, 
with Phenician or Egyptian captains, and they Avould 
prove nothing as to the existence in India at that 
time of what we mean by a written literature. In 
fact, Nearchus himself affirms what Megasthenes said 
after him, namely that "the laws of the sophists in 
India were not written." If, at the same time, the 
Greek travellers in India speak of mile-stones, and 
of cattle marked by the Indians with various signs 
and also with numbers, all this would perfectly agree 
with what we know from other sources, that though 
the art of writing may have reached India before the 
time of Alexander's conquest, its employment for 
literary purposes cannot date from a much earlier time. 

Here then we are brought face to face with a most 
startling fact. Writing was unknown in India before 
the fourth century before Christ, and yet we are 
asked to believe that the Vedic literature in its three 
well-defined periods, the Mantra, Brahma;/a, and 
Sutra periods, goes back to at least a thousand years 
before our era. 

* M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 515. 



VEDA AND VEDA NTA. 219 

Now the Rig-veda alone, which contains a collec- 
tion of ten books of hymns addressed to various 
deities, consists of 1017 (1028) poems, 10,580 verses, 
and about 153,826 words/'^ How were these poems 
composed — for they are composed in very perfect 
metre — and how, after having been composed, were 
they handed down from 1500 before Christ to 1500 
after Christ, the time to which most of our best 
Sanskrit MSS. belong? 

E^itwely by menioiy. This may sound startling, 
but — what will sound still more startling, and yet 
is a fact that can easily be ascertained by anybody 
who doubts it — at the present moment, if every 
MS. of the Rig-veda were lost, we should be able to 
recover the whole of it — from the memory of the 
6"rotriyas in India. These native students learn the 
Veda by heart, and they learn it from the mouth of 
their Guru, never from a MS., still less from my 
printed edition, — and after a time they teach it again 
to their pupils. 

I have had such students in my room at Oxford, 
who not only could repeat these hymns, but who 
repeated them with the proper accents (for the Vedic 
Sanskrit has accents like Greek), nay who, when 
looking through my printed edition of the Rig-veda, 
could point out a misprint without the shghtest hesi- 
tation. 

I can tell you more. There are hardly any various 
readings in our MSS. of the Rig-veda, but various 
schools in India have their own readings of certain 
passages, and they hand down those readings with 
great care. So, instead of collating MSS., as we do 

* M. M., riib])ert Lectures, p 153. 



2 .? o ^VHA r CAN INDIA TEA CH US 9 

in Greek and Latin, I have asked some friends of 
mine to collate those Vedic students, who carry the ir 
own Rig-veda in their m.emory, and to let me have 
the various readings from these living authorities. 

Here then we are not dealing with theories, but 
with facts, which anybody may verify. The whole of 
the Rig-veda, and a great deal more, still exists at 
the present moment in the oral tradition of a number 
of scholars who, if they liked, could write down every 
letter, and every accent, exactlv as we find them in 
our old MSS. 

Of course, this learning by heart is carried on 
under a strict disciphne ; it is, in fact, considered as 
a sacred duty. A native friend of mine, himself a 
very distinguished Vedic scholar, tells me that a boy, 
who is to be brought up as a student of the Rig- 
veda, has to spend about eight years in the house 
of his teacher. He has to learn ten books : first, 
the hymns of the Rig-veda ; then a prose treatise 
on sacrifices, called the Brahma;/a ; then the so- 
called Forest-book or Ara;23^aka ; then the rules on 
domestic ceremonies ; and lastly, six treatises on pro- 
.nunciation, grammar, etymology, metre, astronomy, 
and ceremonial. 

These ten books it has been calculated contain 
nearly 30,000 lines, each line reckoned as thirty-two 
syllables. 

A pupil studies every day, during the eight years 
of his theological apprenticeship, except on the holi- 
days, which are called " non-reading days." There 
being 360 days in a lunar year, the eight years would 
give him 2880 days. Deduct from this 384 holidays, 
and you get 2496 working days during the eight 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 221 

years. If you divide the number of lines, 30,000, by 
the number of working days, you get about twelve 
lines to be learnt each day, though much time is 
taken up, in addition, for practising and rehearsing 
what has been learnt before. 

Now this is the state of things at present, though 
I doubt whether it will last much longer, and I 
always impress on my friends in India, and therefore 
impress on those also who will soon be settled as 
Civil Servants in India, the duty of trying to learn 
all that can still be learnt from those living libra- 
ries. Much ancient Sanskrit lore will be lost for 
ever when that race of .SVotriyas becomes extinct. ■ 

But now let us look back. About a thousand years 
ago a Chinese, of the name of I-tsing, a Buddhist, 
went to India to learn Sanskrit, in order to be able 
to translate some of the sacred books of his own. 
religion, which were originally written in Sanskrit, 
into Chinese. He left China in 671, arrived at 
Tamralipti in India in 673, and went to the great 
College and Monastery of Nalanda, where he studied 
Sanskrit. He returned to China in 695, and died 
in 703.* 

In one of his works which we still possess in 
Chinese, he gives an account of what he saw in India, 
not only among his own co-religionists, the Buddhists, 
but likewise among the Brahmans.f 

Of the Buddhist priests he says that after they 
have learnt to recite the five and the ten precepts, 

* See my article on the date of the Kaxika in the Indian Anti- 
quary, 1880, p 305. 

t The translation of the most important passages in I-tsing's 
work was made for me by one of my Japanese pupils, K. Kasawara, 



222 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 1 

they are taught the 400 hymns of Matr/yfeta, and 
afterward the 150 hymns of the same poet. When 
they are able to recite these, they begin the study of 
the Sutras of their Sacred Canon. They also learn 
by heart the (^atakamala*, which gives an account of 
Buddha in former states of existence. Speaking of 
what he calls the islands of the Southern Sea, which 
he visited after leaving India, I-tsing says ; " There 
are more then ten islands in the South Sea. There 
both priests and laymen recite the 6^atakamala, as 
they recite the hymns mentioned before ; but it has 
not yet been translated into Chinese." 

One of these stories, he proceeds to say, was versi- 
fied by a king (iTie-zhih) and set to music, and was 
performed before the public with a band and^dancing 
— evidently a Buddhist mystery play. 

I-tsing then gives a short account of the system of 
education. Children, he says, learn the forty-nine 
letters, and the 10,000 compound letters when they 
are six years old, and generally finish them in half a 
year. This corresponds to about 300 verses, each 
jloka of thirty-two syllables. It was originally 
taught b}^ Mahei-vara. At eight years, children begin 
to learn the grammar of Pa/ani, and know it after 
about eight months. It consists of 1000 ^lokas, called 
Sutras. 

Then follows the list of roots (dhatu) and the three 
appendices (khila), consisting again of 1000 ^lokas. 
Boys begin the three appendices when they are ten 
years old, and finish them in three years. 

* See Bunyiu Nanjio's Catalogue of the Chinese Tripi/aka, p. 372^ 
where Aryaj-ura, who must have lived before 434 A.D. , is meutinned 
8S the author of t lie (7at^kamalai 



VEDA AND VEDA NT A. 22? 

When they have reached the age of fifteen, they 
begin to study a commentary on the grammar (Sutra) 
and spend five years on learning it. And here I-tsing 
gives the following advice to his countrymen, many 
of whom came to India to learn Sanskrit, but seem 
to have learnt it very imperfectly. " If men of China," 
he writes, " go to India, wishing to study there, they 
should first of all learn these grammatical works, and 
than only other subjects ; if not, they will merely 
waste their labor. These works should be learn-t 
by heart. But this is suited for men of high quality 
only. . . . They should study hard day and night, 
without letting a moment pass for idle repose. They 
should be like Confucius, through whose hard study 
the binding of his Yih-king was three times cut 
asunder, being worn away ; and like Sui-shih, who 
used to read a book repeatedly one hundred times." 
Then follows a remark, more intelligible in Chinese 
then in English : " The hairs of a bull are counted by 
thousands, the horn of a unicorn is only one." 

I-tsing then speaks of the high degree of perfection 
to which the memory of these students attained, both 
among Buddhists and heretics. '' Such men," he 
says, "could commit to memory the contents of two 
volumes learning them only once." 

And then turning to the heretics, or what we 
should call the orthodox Brahmans, he says :" The 
Brahma;^as are regarded throughout the five divisions 
of India as the most respectable. They do not walk 
with the other three castes, and other mixed classes 
of people are still further dissociated from them. 
They revere their Scriptures, the four Vedas, con- 
taining about 100,000 verses. . . . The Vedas are 



224 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 1 

handed down from mouth to mouth, not written on 
paper. There are in every generation some intelU- 
gent Brahman s who can recite those 100,000 verses. 
... I myself saw such men." 

Here then we have an eye-witness who, in the 
seventh century after Christ, visited India, learned 
Sanskrit, and spent about twenty years in different 
monasteries — a man who had no theories of his own 
about oral tradition, but, who, on the contrary, as 
coming from China, was quite familiar with the idea of 
a written, nay, of a printed literature : — and yet what 
does he say ? '* The Vedas are not written on paper, 
but handed down from mouth to mouth." 

Now, I do not quite agree here with I-tsing. At 
all events, we must not conclude from what he says 
that there existed no Sanskrit MSS. at all during his 
time. We know they existed. We know that in the 
first century of our era Sanskrit MSS. were carried 
from India to China and translated there. Most 
likely therefore there were MSS. of the Veda also in 
existence. But I-tsing, for all that, was right in sup- 
posing that these MSS. were not allowed to be used 
by students, and that they had always to learn the 
Veda by heart and from the mouth of a properly qual- 
ified teacher. The very fact that in the later law- 
books severe punishments are threatened against per- 
sons who copy the Veda or learn it from a MS. shows 
that MSS. existed, and that their existence interfered 
seriously with the ancient privileges of the Brahmans, 
as the only legitimate teachers of their sacred scrip- 
tures. 

If now, after having heard this account of I-tsing, 
we go back for about another thousand years, we shall 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. ^25 

feel less sceptical in accepting the evidence which we 
find in the so-called Pratii-^khyas, that is, collections 
of rules which, so far as we know at present, go back 
to the fifth century before our era, and which tell us 
almost exactly the same as what we can see in India 
at the present moment, namely that the education of 
children of the three twice-born castes, the Brahmanas, 
Kshatriyas, and Vai^-yas, consisted in their passing at 
least eight years in the house of a Guru, and learning 
by heart the ancient Vedic hymns. 

The art of teaching had even at that early time 
been reduced to a perfect system, and at that time 
certainly there is not the slightest trace of anything, 
such as a book, or skin, or parchment, a sheet of 
paper, pen or ink, being known even by name to the 
people of India; while every expression connected 
with what we should call literature, points to a litera- 
ture (we cannot help using that word) existing in 
memory only, and being handed down with the most 
scrupulous care by means of oral tradition. 

I had to enter into these details because I know that, 
with our ideas of literature, it requires an effort to 
imagine the bare possibility of a large amount of 
poetry, and still more of prose, existing in any but a 
written form. And yet here too we only see what 
we see elsewhere, namely that man, before the great 
discoveries of civilization were made, was able by 
greater individual efforts to achieve what to us, accus- 
tomed to easier contrivances, seems almost impossible. 
So-called savages were able to chip flints, to get fire 
by rubbing sticks of wood, w^hich baflfles our handiest 
workmen. Are we to suppose that, if they wished to 
preserve some songs which, as they believed, had 



226 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US? 

once secured tliem the favor of their gods, had 
brought rain from heaven, or led them on to victory, 
they would have found no means of doing so ? We 
have only to read such accounts as, for instance, Mr. 
William Wyatt Gill has given us in his " Historical 
Sketches of Savage Life in Polynesia," ^ to see how 
anxious even savages are to preserve the records of 
their ancient heroes, kings, and gods, particularly 
when the dignity or nobility of certain families de- 
pends on these songs, or when they contained what 
might be called the title-deeds to large estates. And 
that the Vedic Indians were not the only savages of 
antiquity who discovered the means of perserving a 
large literature by means of oral tradition, we may 
learn from Caesar, f not a very credulous witness, who 
tells us that the " Druids were said to know a large 
number of verses by heart ; that some of them spent 
twenty years in learning them, and that they con- 
sidered it wrong to commit them to writing '' — exactly 
the same story which we hear in India. 

We must return once more to the question of 
dates. We have traced the existence of the Veda, 
as handed down by oral tradition, from our days 
to the days of I-tsing in the seventh century after 
Christ, and again to the period of the Pratij'akhyas> 
in the fifth century before Christ. 

In that fifth century b. c._ took place the rise of 
Buddhism, a religion built up on the ruins of the 
Vedic religion, and founded, so to say, on the denial 

* Wellington 1880. 

"t De Bello Gall, vi 14 ; History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, 
p. 506. 



VEDA AND VEDA NT A. 227 

of the divine authority ascribed to the Veda by all 
orthodox Brahmans. 

Whatever exists therefore of Vedic literature must 
be accommodated within the centuries preceding the 
rise of Buddhism, and if I tell you that there are 
three periods of Vedic literature to be accommodated, 
the third presupposing the second, and the second the 
first, and that even that first period presents us with 
a collection, and a systematic collection of Vedic 
hymns, I think you will agree with me that it is 
from no desire for an extreme antiquity, but simply 
from a respect for facts, that students of the Veda 
have come to the conclusion that these hymns, of 
which the MSS. do not carry us back beyond the 
fifteenth century after Christ, took their origin in the 
fifteenth century before Christ. 

One fact I must mention once more, because I . 
think it may carry conviction even against the 
stoutest scepticism. 

I mentioned that the earliest inscriptions disco- 
vered in India belong to the reign of King Aj-oka, the 
grandson of Kandragupta, who reigned from 259-222 
before Christ. What is the language of those in- 
scriptions t Is it the Sanskrit of the Vedic hymns .? 
Certainly not. Is it the later Sanskrit of the Brah- 
ma;^as and Sutras } Certainly not. These inscriptions 
are written in the local dialects as then spoken in India, 
and these local dialects differ from the grammatical 
Sanskrit about as much as Italian does from Latin. 

What follows from this } First, that the archaic 
Sanskrit of the Veda had ceased to be spoken before 
the third century b. c. Secondly, that even the later 



2 28 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

grammatical Sanskrit was no longer spoken and un- 
derstood by the people at large ; that Sanskrit there- 
fore had ceased, nay, we may say, had long ceased to 
be the spoken language of the country when Buddhism 
arose, and that therefore the youth aud manhood of 
the ancient Vedic language lie far beyond the period 
that gave birth to the teaching of Buddha, who, 
though he may have known Sanskrit, and even Vedic 
Sanskrit, insisted again and again on the duty that his 
disciples should preach his doctrines in the language 
of the people whom they wished to benefit. 

And now, when the time allotted to me is nearly 
at an end, I find, as it always happens, that I have 
not been able to say one half of what I hoped to say 
as to the lessons to be learnt by us in India, even 
with regard to this one branch of human knowledge 
only, the study of the origin of religion. I hope, 
however, I may have succeeded in showing you the 
entirely new aspect which the old problem of the 
theogony, or the origin and growth of the Devas or gods 
assumes from the light thrown upon it by the Veda. 
Instead of positive theories, we now have positive 
facts, such as you look for in vain anywhere else ; and 
though there is still a considerable interval between 
the Devas of the Veda, even in their highest form, 
and such concepts as Zeus, Apollon and Athene, yet 
the chief riddle is solved, and we know now at last 
what stuff the gods of the ancient world were made of. 

But this theogonic process is but one side of the 
ancient Vedic religion, and there are two other sides 
of at least the same importance and of even a deeper 
interest to us. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 22,9 

There arc in fact three reh'gions in the Veda, or, if 
I may say so, three naves in one great temple, reared, as 
it were before our eyes by poets, prophets, and philo- 
sophers. Here, too, we can watch the work and the 
workmen. We have not to deal with hard formulas only, 
with unintelligible ceremonies, or petrified fetishes. 
We can see how the human mind arrives b;^ a per- 
fectly rational process at all its later irrationalities. 
This is what distinguishes the Veda from all other 
Sacred Books. Much, no doubt, in the Veda also, 
and in the Vedic ceremonial, is already old and unin- 
telligible, hard and petrified. But in many cases the 
development of names and concepts, their transition 
from the natural to the supernatural, from the indi- 
vidual to the general, is still going on, and it is for 
that very reason that we find it so difficult, nay almost 
impossible, to translate the growing thoughts of the 
Veda into the full-grown and more than full-grown 
language of our time. 

Let us take one of the oldest words for god in the 
Veda, such asdeva, the Latin dens. The dictionaries 
tell you that d e va means god and gods, and so, no 
doubt, it does. But if we always translated d eva in 
the Vedic hymns by god, we should not be translating, 
but completely transforming the thoughts of the Vedic 
poets. I do not mean only that our idea of God is 
totally different from the idea that was intended to 
be expressed by d e v a ; but even the Greek and 
Roman concept of gods would be totally inadequate 
to convey the thoughts imbedded in the Vedic d e v a. 
D e V a meant, originally, bright, and nothing else, 
Meaning bright, it was constantly used of the sky, 
the starS; the sun, the dawn, the day, the spring, the 



230 J^^A ^ CAN INDIA TEA CM US f 

rivers, the earth ; and when a poet wished to speak of 
all of these by one and the same word — by what we 
should call a general term — he called them all D e va s. 
When that had been done D e v a did no longer mean 
" the Bright ones," but the name comprehended all 
the qualities which the sky and the sun and the 
dawn shared in common, excluding only those that 
were peculiar to each. 

Here you see how, by the simplest process, the 
D e V as, the bright ones, might become and did become 
the D e va s, the heavenly, the kind, the powerful, the 
invisible, the immortal — and, in the end, something 
very like the^£o/(or dii) of Greeks and Romans. 

In this way one Beyond, the Beyond of Nature, 
was built up in the ancient religion of the Veda, and 
peopled with Devas, and Asuras, and Vasus, and 
Adityas all names for the bright solar, celestial, diur- 
nal, and vernal powers of nature, without altogether 
excluding, however, even the dark and unfriendly 
powers, those of the night, of the dark clouds, or of 
winter, capable of mischief, but always destined in 
the end to succumb to the valor and strength of their 
bright antagonists. 

We now come to the second nave of the Vedic 
temple, the second Beyond that was dimly perceived, 
and grasped and named by the ancient Rishis, namely 
the world of the Departed Spirits. 

There was in India, as elsewhere, another very 
early faith, springing up naturally in the hearts of 
the people, that their fathers and mothers, when they 
departed this life, departed to a Beyond, wherever it 
might be, either in the East from whence all the bright 



VEDA AND VEDA NT A, ^31 

bevas seemed to come, or more commonly in the West, 
the land to which they seemed to go, called in the . 
Veda the realm of Yama or the setting sun. The idea 
that beings which once had been, could ever cease to 
be, had not yet entered their minds ; and from the 
belief that their fathers existed somewhere, though 
they could see them no more, there arose the behef in 
another Beyond, and the germs of another religion. 

Nor was the actual power of the fathers quite im- 
perceptible or extinct even after their death. Their 
presence continued to be felt in the ancient laws and 
customs of the family, most of which rested on their 
will and their authority. While their fathers were 
alive and strong, their will was law ; and when, after 
their death, doubts or disputes arose on points of law 
or custom, it was but natural that the memory and the 
authority of the fathers should be appealed to to settle 
such points — that the law should still be their will. 

Thus Manu says {IV. 178): "On the path on which his 
fathers and grandfathers have walked, on that path of 
good men let him walk, and he will not go wrong.*' 

In the same manner then in which, out of the 
bright powers of nature, the Devas or gods had arisen, 
there rose out of predicates shared in common by the 
departed, such as pitns, father^ preta, gone away, 
another general concept, what we should call Manes, 
the kind ones. Ancestors, Shades, Spirits or Ghosts, 
whose worship was nowhere more fully developed 
than in India. That common name, Pitm ox Fathers, 
gradually attracted towards itself all that the fathers 
shared in common. It came to mean not only fathers^ 
but invisible, kind, powerful, immortal, heavenly 
beings, and we can watch in the Veda, better perhaps 



232 WBAT CAN INDIA TEACH USf 

than anywhere else, the inevitable, yet most touching 
metamorphosis' of ancient thought, — the love of the 
child for father and mother becoming transfigured into 
an instinctive belief in the immortality of the soul. 

It is strange, and really more than strange, that 
not only should this important and prominent side of 
the ancient religion of the Hindus have been ignored, 
but that of late its very existence should have been 
doubted. I feel obliged, therefore, to add a few words 
in support of what I have said just now of the 
supreme importance of this belief in and this worship 
of ancestral spirits in India from the most ancient to 
the most modern times. Mr. Herbert Spencer, who 
has done so much in calling attention to ancestor- 
worship as a natural ingredient of religion among all 
savage nations, declares in the most emphatic man- 
ner,* " that he has seen it implied, that he has heard 
it in conversation, and that he now has it before him 
in print, that no Indo-European or Semitic nation, so 
far as we know, seems to have made a religion of the 
worship of the dead." I do not doubt his words, but 
I think that on so important a point, Mr. Herbert 
Spencer ought to have named his authorities. It 
seems to me almost impossible that anybody who has 
ever opened a book"on India should have made such a 
statement. There are hymns in the Rig-veda ad- 
dressed to the Fathers. There are full descriptions of 
the worship due to the Fathers in the Brahma^as ano 
Sutras. The epic poems, the law books, the Pura/^as, 
all are brimful of allusions to ancestral offerings. The 
whole social fabric of India, with its laws of inheritance 

* Principles of Sociology, p. 313. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 2^3 

and marriage *, rests on a belief in the Manes, — and 
yet we are told that no Indo-European nation seems 
to have made a religion of the worship of the dead. 

The Persians had their Fravashis, the Greeks their 
dai}j,ov£io\: rather their^foz 7tarp(S)Oi2iXid thoir siScoXa^ 

iffOXoiy eTtixOovioi, g)vXaK8? Ovrjrwv avdpchitQDv 
oi pa cpv\aG6ovaiv re 6iKa<; nai (TjfrAz^a: spya, 
rjepa icrffa/j-svoi Ttavrrj cpoitc^vrsG in aiavy 
TcXovrodorai 
j5t;^>lo? ^z^Sfpa^ (Hesiodi Opera et Dies, vv. 122-126) ; 
while among the Romans the Lares familiares and 
the Divi Manes were worshipped more zealously than 
any other gods.f Manu goes so far as to tell us in 
one place (III. 203) : " An oblation by Brahmans to 
their ancestors transcends an oblation to the deities : " 
and yet we are told that no Indo-European nation 
seems to have made a religion of the worship of the 
dead. 

Such things ought really not to be, if there is to 
be any progress in historical research, and I cannot 
help thinking that what Mr. Herbert Spencer meant 
was probably no more than that some scholars did not 
admit that the worship of the dead formed the whole 
of the religion of any of -the Indo-European nations. 
That, no doubt, is perfectly true, but it would be 
equally true, I believe, of almost any other religion. 
And on this point again the students of anthropology 

* " The Hindu Law of Inheritance is based upon the Hindu reli- 
gion, and we must be cautious that in administrating Hindu law we 
do not, by acting upon our notions derived from English law, inad- 
vertently wound ©r offend th* religious feelings of those who may be 
affected by our iedsions." Bengal Law Reports, i®3. 

t Cdoer©, Ife Leg, 9, zz, *' Decorum maniom jura sancta'sunt© ; 
n OS let© datos divos habento. " 



234 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 1 

will learn more, I believe, from the Veda than from 
any other book. 

In the Veda the Y\X.rh, or fathers, are invoked to- 
gether with the Devas, or gods, but they are not con- 
founded with them. The Devas never become Pitns, 
and though such adjectives as d e v a are sometimes 
applied to the Pitr/s, and they are raised to the rank 
of the older classes of Devas (Manu III. 192, 284, 
Ya^;7avalkya I. 268), itjs easy to see that the Pitns 
and Devas had each their independent origin, and 
that they represent two totally distinct phases of the 
human mind in the creation of its objects of worship. 
This is a lesson which ought never to be forgotten. 

We read in the Rig-veda, VI. 52,4: "May the 
rising Dawns protect me, may the flowing Rivers 
protect me, may the firm Mountains protect me, may 
the Fathers protect me at this invocation of the 
gods." Here nothing can be clearer than the separate 
existence of the Fathers, apart from the Dawns, the 
Rivers, and the Mountains, though they are included 
in one common Devahuti, or invocation of the gods. 

We must distinguish, however, from the very first, 
between two classes, or rather between two concepts 
of Fathers, the one comprising the' distant, half-for- 
gotten, and almost mythical ancestors of certain 
families or of what would have been to the . poets of 
the Veda, the whole human race, the other consisting 
of the fathers who had but lately departed, and who 
were still, as it were, personally remembered and 
revered. 

The old ancestors in general approach more nearly 
to the gads. They are often represented as having 
gone to the abode of Yama, the ruler of the departed. 



VEDA AND VEDA NT A. 235 

and to live there in company with some of the Devas 
(Rig-veda VII. 76, 4, devana?/^ sadhamada/^ ; Rig-veda 
X. 16, I, devana;;^ vai-ani>^). 

We sometimes read of the great-grandfathers being 
in heaven, the grandfathers in the sky, the fathers on 
the earth, the first in company with the Adityas, the 
second with the Rudras, the last with the Vasus. 
All these are individual poetical conceptions.* 

Yama himself is sometimes invoked as if he were 
one of the Fathers, the first of mortals that died or 
that trod the path of the Fathers (the pitrzya/^a, X. 
2. 7) leading to the common sunset in the West.f 
Still his real Deva-like nature is never completely 
lost, and, as the god of the setting sun, he is indeed 
the leader of the Fathers, but not one of the Fathers 
himself.J 

Many of the benefits which men enjoyed on earth 
were referred to the Fathers, as having first been 
procured and first enjoyed by them. They performed 
the first sacrifices, and secured the benefits arising 
from them. Even the great events in nature, such 
as the rising of the sun, the light of the day and the 
darkness of the night, were sometimes referred to 
them and they were praised for having broken open the 
dark stable of the morning and having brought out 
the cows, that is, the days (X. 6Z, ii)§. They were 

* See Atharva-veda XVIII. 2, 49. 

t Rig-veda X. 14, i — 2. He is called Vaivasvata, the solar (X. 
58, I ), and even the son of Vivasvat, (X. 14, 5). In a later phase 
of religious thought Yama is conceived as the first man (Atharva- 
veda XVIII. 3, 13, as compared with Rig-veda X. 14, i). 

X Rig-veda X. 14. 

§ In the Avesta many of these things are done by Ahura Mazda with 
the* help of the Fravashis. 



236 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH US 1 

even praised for having adorned the night with stars, 
while in later writings the stars are said to be the 
lights of the good people who have entered into 
heaven"*. Similar ideas, we know, prevailed among 
the ancient Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The 
Fathers are called in the Veda truthful (satya), wise 
(suvidatra), righteous (n'tavat), poets (kav/), leaders 
(pathikr/t), and one of their most frequent epithets 
is somyr, delighting in Soma, Soma being the 
ancient intoxicating beverage of the Vedic i^^'shis, 
which was believed to bestow immortalityt, but 
which had been lost, or at all events had become 
difficult to obtain by the Aryans, after their migration 
into the Punjab. t 

' The families of the Bhngus, the Angiras, the Athar- 
vans§ all have their Pitns or Fathers, who are invoked 
to sit down on the grass and to accept the offerings 
placed there for them. Even the name of Pitr/yagna, 
sacrifice of the Fathers, occurs already in the hymns 
of the Rig-veda.|| 

The following is one of the hymns of the Rig-veda 
by which those ancient Fathers were invited to come 
to their sacrifice (Rig-veda X. 15) ; — \ 

1. "May the Soma-loving Fathers, the lowest, the 
highest, and the middle, arise. May the gentle and 
righteous Fathers who have come to life (again), pro- 
tect us in these invocations ! 

2. " May this salutation be for the Fathers to-day, 

* See iS'atapatha Brahma^a I. 9, 3, 10 ; VI. 5, 4, 8. 

t Rig-veda VIII. 48, 3: "We drank Soma, we became immortaU 
w© went to the light, we fotind tiie gods ; " VIII, 48, is- 

X Rig-veda IX. 97, 39. § Ibid. X. 14, 6. H Ibid, X. 16, 10. 

^ A translation considerably differing from ray own is given bv 
Sarvidhikari in his Tagore Lectures for 1880, p. 34. 



VkDA AND VE^ANfA. 237 

for those who have departed before or after ; whether 
they now dwell in the sky above the earth, or among 
the blessed people. 

3. " I invited the wise Fathers .... may they 
come hither quickly, and sitting on the grass readily 
partake of the pou red-out draught ! 
- 4. " Come hither to us with your help, you Fathers 
who sit on the grass ! We have prepared (.hese liba- 
tions for you, accept them ! Come hither with your 
most blessed protection, and give us health and 
wealth without fail ! 

5. "The Soma-loving Fathers have been called 
hither to their dear viands which are placed on the 
grass. Let them approach, let them listen, let them 
bless, let them protect us ! 

6. " Bending your knee and sitting on my right 
accept all this sacrifice. Do not hurt us, O Fathers, 
for any wrong that we may have committed against 
you, men as we are. 

7. " When you sit down on the lap of the red dawns> 
grant wealth to the generous mortal ! O Fathers, 
give of your treasure to the sons of this man here, and 
bestow vigor here on us ! 

8. " May Yama, as a friend with friends, consume 
the offerings according to his wish, united with those 
old Soma-loving Fathers of ours, the Vasish^/^as, who 
arranged the Soma draught. 

9. " Come hither, O Agni, with those wise and 
truthful Fathers who like to sit down near the hearth, 
who thirsted when yearning for the gods, who knew 
the sacrifice, and who were strong in praise with their 
songs. 

10. "Come, O Agni, with those ancient fathers who 



238 WHAT CAN INDIA I^EACH US 9 

like to sit down near the hearth, who for ever praise 
the gods, the truthful, who eat and drink our obla- 
tions, making company with Indra and the gods. 

11. " O Fathers, you who have been consumed by 
Agni, come here, sit down on your seats, you kind 
guides ! Eat of the offerings which we have placed 
on the turf, and then grant us wealth and strong off- 
spring ! 

12. "O Agni, O 6^atavadas,* at our request thou 
hast carried the offerings, having first rendered them 
sweet. Thou gavest them to the Fathers, and they 
fed on their share. Eat also, O God, the proffered 
oblations " 

13. "The Fathers who are here, and the Fathers 
who are not here, those whom we know, and those 
whom we know not, thou, 6^atavedas, knowest how 
many they are, accept the well-made sacrifice with 
the sacrifical portions ! 

14. " To those who, whether burnt by fire or not 
burnt by fire, rejoice in their share in the midst of 
heaven, grant thou, O King, that their body may take 
that life which they wish for ! " t 

Distinct from the worship offered to these primi- 
tive ancestors, is the reverence which from an early 
time was felt to be due by children to their departed 
father, soon also to their grandfather, and great 
grandfather. The ceremonies in which these more 
personal feelings found expression were of a more 
domestic character, and allowed therefore of greater 

local variety. 

It would be quite impossible to give here even an 

* Cf. Max Miiller, Rig-veda, transl. vol. i. p. 24. t Note K. 



V£:dA and VEDA N'T a. 2^g 

abstract only of the minute regulations which have 
been preserved to us in the Brahma«as, the »Srauta, 
G//hya, and SamayaMrika Sutras, the Law*books, 
and a mass of latter manuals on the performance of 
endless rites, all intended to honor the Departed. 
Such are the minute prescriptions as to times and 
seasons, as to altars and offerings, as to the number 
and shape of the sacrificial vessels, as to the proper 
postures of the sacrificers, and the different arrange- 
ments of the vessels, that it is extremely difficult to 
catch hold of what we really care for, namely, the 
thoughts and intentions of those who first devised all 
these intricacies. Much has been written on this 
class of sacrifices by European scholars also, begin- 
ning with Colebrooke's excellent essays on " The Reli- 
gious Ceremonies of the Hindus," first published in 
the Asiatic Researches, vol. v, Calcutta, 1798. But 
when we ask the simple question, What was the 
thought from whence all this outward ceremonial 
sprang, and what was the natural craving of the 
human heart which it seemed to satisfy, we hardly 
get an intelligible answer anywhere. It is true that 
^raddhas continue to be performed all over India to 
the present day, but we know how widely the modern 
ceremonial has diverged from the rules laid down in 
the old 6'astras, and it is quite clear from the descrip- 
tions given to us by recent travellers that no one can 
understand the purport even of these survivals of the 
old ceremonial, unless he understands Sanskrit and can 
read the old Sutras. We are indeed told in full detail 
how the cakes were made which the Spirits were sup- 
posed to eat, how many stalks of grass were to be used 
on which they had to be offered, how long each stalk 



^40 WirA T CAN INDIA TEA Ctt t/S f 

ought to be, and in what direction it should be held. 
V All the things which teach us nothing are explained 
to us in abundance, but the few things which the 
true scholar really cares for are passed over, as if 
they had no interest to us at all, and have to be dis- 
covered under heaps of rubbish. 

In order to gain a little light, I think we ought to 
distinguish between — 

1. The daily ancestral' sacrifice, the Pitr/ya^la, as 
one of the five Great Sacrifices (Mahaya^/^as) ; 

2. The monthly ancestral sacrifice, the Pi;/</a-pitr/- 
ya^;1a, as part of the New and Full-moon sacrifice ; 

3. The funeral ceremonies on the death of a house- 
holder ; 

4. The Agapes, or feasts of love and charity, com- 
monly called 5raddhas, at which food and other 
charitable gifts were bestowed on deserving persons 
in memory of the deceased ancestors. The name of 
»Sraddha belongs properly to this last class only, but it 
has been transferred to the second and third class of 
sacrifices also, because 5raddha formed an important 
part in them. 

The daily Pitr/ya^a or Ancestor- worship is one of 
the five sacrifices, sometimes called the Great Sacri- 
fices,* which every married man ought to perform 
day by day. They are mentioned in the Gnhyasla- 
tras (A^v. III. i), as Devaya^;1a, for the Devas, 
Bhutaya^la, for animals etc., Pitnya^;1a, for the 
Fathers, Brahmaya^-^au, for Brahman, i. e. study of 
the Veda, and Manushyaya^a, for men, i. e. hospital- 
ity, etc. 

* -S'atapatha Brahmawa XI. 5, 6, i ; Taitt. Ar 11. 11, 10 ; Ajvalay- 
ana Grihya-sfitras III. i, i ; Paraskara GrzTiya-sutras II. 9, i; 
Apastamba. Dharma-sAtras, translated by Biihler, pp. 47 seq. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 241 

Manu (III. 70) tells us the same, namely, that a 
married man has five great religious duties to per- 
form : 

1. The Brahma-sacrifice, i. e. the studying and 
teaching of the Veda (sometimes called Ahuta). 

2. The Pitn-sacrifice, i. e. the offering of cakes and 
water to the Manes (sometimes called Prai-ita). 

3. The Deva-sacrifice, i. e. the offering of oblations 
to the Gods (sometimes called Huta). 

4. The Bhuta-sacrifice, i. e. the giving of food to 
living creatures (sometimes called Prahuta). 

5. The Manushya-sacrifice. i. e. the receiving of 
guests with hospitality (sometimes called Brahmya- 
huta.)* 

The performance of this daily Pitnya^a seems to 
have been extremely simple. The householder had 
to put his sacred cord on the right shoulder, to say 
" Svadha to the Fathers," and to throw the remains 
of certain offerings towards the South.! 

The human impulse to this sacrifice, if sacrifice it 
can be called, is clear enough. The five " great sacri- 
fices " comprehended in early times the v/hole duty of 
man from day to day. They were connected with his 
daily meal. J When this meal was preparing, and 
before he could touch it himself, he was to offer some- 
thing to the Gods, a Vaij-vadeva offering §, in which 
the chief deities were Agni fire. Soma the VivS-ve 
Devas, Dhanvantari, a kind of Aesculapius, Kuhii 
and Anumati (phases of the moon), Pra^pati, lord of 

* In th« ♦Sankabyana G^&ya (I. 5) Soa;? Faika-y^riSas areraentioue-d 
called Huta, ahuta, prahuta, prMiSt 

t Ajv. G-rihya-siitras I. 3. 10. | Manu III. 117-11S, 

§ Manu III. 85. 



2 42 ^^J'A T CAN INDIA TEA CII USf 

creatures, Dydvd-pnthivt, Heaven and Earth, and Svi- 
slVaknt, the fire on the hearth. 

After having thus satisfied the Gods in the four 
quarters, the householder had to throw some oblations 
into the open air, which were intended for animals, 
and in some cases for invisible beings, ghosts and such 
like. Then he was to remember the Departed, the 
Pit^/s, with some offerings ; but even after having done 
this he was not yet to begin his own repast, unless he 
had also given something to strangers (atithis). 

When all this had been fulfilled, and when, besides, 
the householder, as we should say, had said his daily 
prayers, or repeated what he had learnt of the Veda, 
then and then only was he in harmony with the world 
that surrounded him, the five Great Sacrifices had 
been performed by him, and he was free from all the 
sins arising from a thoughtless and selfish life. 

This Pitnya^^a, as one of the five daily sacrifices, 
is described in the Brahma/^as, the Gn"hya and 
Samaya/^arika Sutras, and of course, in the legal 
Sa;;2hit^s. Rajendralal Mitra * informs us that 
" orthodox Brahmans to this day profess to observe 
all these five ceremonies, but that in reality only 
the offerings to the gods and manes are strictly 
observed, while the reading is completed by the 
repetition of the Gayatri only, and charity and feeding 
of animals are casual and uncertain." 

Quite different from this simple daily ancestral 
offering is the Pitr^ya^^a or Pi;2<^a-pitnya^^a, 
which forms part of many of the statutable sacrifices, 
and, first of all, of the New and Full-Moon sacrifice. 
Here again the human motive is intelligible enough. 

* Taittjriya.ra«yaka, Preface, p. 23, 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 243 

It was the contemplation of the regular course of 
nature, the discovery of order in the coming and 
going of the heavenly bodies, the growing confidence 
in some ruling power of the world which lifted man's 
thoughts from his daily work to higher regions, and 
filled his heart with a desire to approach these 
higher powers with praise, thanksgiving, and offer- 
ings. And it was at such moments as the waning 
of the moon that his thoughts would most naturally 
turn to those whose life had waned, whose bright 
faces were no longer visible on earth, his fathers or 
ancestors. Therefore at the very beginning of the 
New-Moon sacrifice, we are told in the Brahma;^as f 
and in the 5rauta-sutras, that a Pitr2ya^;1a, a sacri- 
fice to the Fathers, has to be performed. A iTaru 
or pie had to be prepared in the Dakshi^^agni, the 
southern fire, and the offerings, consisting of water 
and round cakes (pi^^^as), were especially dedicated 
to father, grandfather and great-grandfather, while 
the wife of the sacificer, if she wished for a son, was 
allowed to eat one of the cakes. t 

Simil?;/)' ^.cestral offerings took place during other 
sacrificeb ^y, of which the New and Full-Moon sacri- 
fices form the general type. 

It may be quite true that these two kinds of 
ancestral sacrifices have the same object and share 
the same name, but their character is different; and 
if, as has often been the case, they are mixed up 
together, we lose the most important lessons which 

* Masi masi vo' j-anam iti stMttk\ Gobhiliya GnTipa-sfttras, p. 1055. 

t See Y\nd2c^\tri'jz.ghz.t von Dr. O. Donner, 1S70. The restriction to 
three ancestors, father, grandfather, and gr^-grandfather, occurs in 
the Va^asaneyi-saz^hita,. XIX. 36 — 37. 



244 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us f 

a study of the ancient ceremonial should teach us. 
I cannot describe the difference between those two 
Pitr/ya^^as more decisively than by pointing out 
that the former was performed by the father of a 
family, or, if we may say so, by a layman, the latter 
by a regular priest, or a class of priests, selected by 
the sacrificer to act in his behalf. As the Hindus 
themselves would put it, the former is a gr^'hya, 
a domestic, the later a j^rauta, a priestly ceremony. * 

We now come to a third class of ceremonies which 
are likewise domestic and personal, but which differ 
from the two preceding ceremonies by their occasional 
character, I mean the funeral, as distinct from the 
ancestral ceremonies. In one respect these funeral 
ceremonies may represent an earlier phase of worship 
than the daily and monthly ancestral sacrifices. They 
lead up to them, and, as it were, prepare the de- 
parted for their future dignity as Pitn's or Ances- 
tors. On the other hand, the conception of Ances- 
tors in general must have existed before any de- 
parted person could have been raised to that rank 
and I therefore preferred to describe the ancestral 
sacrifices first. 

Nor need I enter here very fully into the character 
of the special funeral ceremonies of India. I described 
them in a special paper, " On Sepulture and Sacrificial 

* There is however, great variety in these matters, according to dif- 
ferent jakhas. Thus, according to the GobhiUj§.khS, Ymdz. Fiirtyagua. 
is to be considered as smSxta, not as jrauta (pindz-pitriya^-nzk khalv 
ssm^-MAakhtiytm nlsti) ; while others maintain that an agnimat should 
perform the sm§-rta, a jr$,ut4gnimat the jrauta Pit^'iya^^a; see Gobhilt- 
ya S-rihya-siitras, ^.671. On page 667 we road : anagner ajnivasyJj- 
raddha, n&nvS-haryambj^iidara^ztyajaa. 



t^MDA AND VEDANTA. 24^ 

Customs in the Veda," nearly thirty years ago. * 
Their spirit is the same as that of the funeral cere- 
monies of Greeks, Romans, Slavonic, and Teutonic 
nations, and the coincidences between them all are 
often most surprising. 

In Vedic times the people in India both burnt and 
buried their dead, and they did this with a certain 
solemnity, and, after a time, according to fixed 
rules. Their ideas about the status of the departed, 
after their body had been burnt and their ashes 
buried, varied considerably, but in the main they 
seem to have believed in a life to come, not very 
different from our life on earth, and in the power of 
the departed to confer blessings on their descend- 
ants. It soon therefore became the interest of the 
survivors to secure the favor of their departed 
friends by observances and offerings which, at first 
were the spontaneous manifestations of human feel- 
ings, but which soon became traditional, technical, in 
fact, ritual. 

On the day on which the corpse had been burnt, 
the relatives (samanodakas) bathed and poured out 
a handful of water to the deceased, pronouncing his 
name and that of his family.t At sunset they re- 
turned home, and, as was but natural, they were told 
to cook nothing during the first night, and to observe 
certain rules during the next day up to ten days* 
according to the character of the deceased. These 
were days of mourning, or, as they were afterwards 
called, days of impurity, when the mourners with- 
drew from contact with the world, and shrank by a 

* Uber Todtenbestatlung und Opfergebrauche im Veda, in Zeit- 
schrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, vol. ix, 1856, 
t Ajvalayana Gr/hya-siitras IV. 4, 10. 



^4^ WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH li^ I 

natural impulse from the ordinary occupations and 
pleasures of life.^ 

Then followed the collecting of the ashes on the 
nth, 13th or 15th day of the dark half of the moon. 
On returning from thence they bathed, and then 
offered what was called a ^raddha to the departed. 

This word 6'raddha, which meets us here for the 
first time, is full of interesting lessons, if only properly 
understood. First of all it should be noted that it is 
absent, not only from the hymns, but, so far as we 
know at present, even from the ancient Brahma/zas. 
It seems therefore a word of a more modern origin. 
There is a passage in Apastamba's Dharma-sutras 
which betrays, on the part of the author, a conscious- 
ness of the more modern origin of the .Sraddhas : — f 

" Formerly men and gods lived together in this 
world. Then the gods in reward of their sacrifices 
went to heaven, but men were left behind. Those 
men who perform sacrifices in the same manner as 
the gods did, dwelt (after death)*with the gods and 
Brahman in heaven. Now (seeing men left behind) 
Manu revealed this ceremony which is designated by 
the word Sraddha." 

Sraddha has assumed many | meanings, and Manu,§ 

* Manu V. 64-65. 

t Biihler, Apastamba, Sacred Books of the East, vol. ii. p. 138 ; 
also ^raddh^kalpa, p. 890. Though the 6'raddha is prescribed in 
the Gobhiliya Grz'hya-sutras, IV . 4, 2-3, it is not described there, but 
in a separate treatise, the ^Sraddha-kalpa. 

I As meaning the food, jraddha occurs in JiMdhabhu^ and 
similar words. As meaning the sacrificial act, it is explained, 
yatraitai ^/^raddhaya diyate tad eva karma jraddhaj-abdabhidheyam. 
Pretam pitrims kz. nirdii-ya bho^yaz;^ yat priyam atmana/^ jraddhaya 
diyate yatra tai/^^r§,ddhamparikirtitam. Gobhiliya Gr/hya-sfitras, p. 
892. We also read j-raddh^nvita/z jraddhaw kurvita, "let a man per- 
form the jraddha with faith j " Gobhiliya Gr^hya-sutras, p. 1053. 

§ Manu III, 82. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 247 

for instance, uses it almost synonymously with pit? /- 
y2ign3.. B'ut its original meaning seems to have been 
" that which is given with iraddha or faith," i.e. charity 
bestowed on deserving persons, and, more particularly, 
on Brahma;zas. The gift was called sraddha, but the 
act itself also was called by the same name. The word 
is best explained by Naraya;^a in his commentary on 
the Gnhya-sutras of Asvalayana (IV. 7), " *Sraddha is 
that which is given in faith to Brahmans for the sake" 
of the Fathers." * 

Such charitable gifts flowed most naturally and 
abundantly at the time of a man's death, or when- 
ever his memory was revived by happy or unhappy 
events in a family, and hence Sraddha has become 
the general name for ever so many sacred acts com- 
memorative of the departed. We hear of 5raddhas 
not only at funerals, but at joyous events also, when 
presents were bestowed in the name of the family, 
and therefore in the name of the ancestors also, on 
all who had a right to that distinction. 

It is a mistake therefore to look upon »Sraddhas 
simply as offerings of water or cakes to the Fathers. 
An offering to the Fathers was, no doubt, a symbolic 
part of each *Sraddha, but its more important character 
was charity bestowed in memory of the Fathers. 

This, in time, gave rise to much abuse, like the 
alms bestowed on the Church during the Middle 
Ages, But in the beginning the motive was excellent. 
It was simply a wish to benefit others, arising from 
the conviction, felt more strongly in the presence of 
death than at any other time, that as we can carry 

* Pitr^n uddijya yad dzyate br^biria??ebhya/; j-yaddhaya X2ik /^hrM- 



248 WHAT CAN INDIA TEACH us f 

nothing out of this world, we ought to do as much 
good as possible in the world with our worldly goods. 
At *Sraddhas the Brahma?/as were said to represent 
the sacrificial fire into which the gifts should be 
thrown.* If we translate here Brahma/^as by priests, 
we can easily understand why there should have been 
in later times so strong a feeling against 5raddhas. 
But priest is a very bad rendering of Brahma;2a. The 
Brahma;/as were, socially and intellectually, a class of 
men of high breeding. They were a recognised and, 
no doubt, a most essential element in the ancient 
society of India. As they lived for others, and 
were excluded from most of the lucrative pursuits 
of life, it was a social, and it soon became a reli- 
gious duty, that they should be supported by the 
community at large. Great care was taken that 
the recipients of such bounty as was bestowed at 
.Sraddhas should be strangers, neither friends nor 
enemies, and in no way related to the family. Thus 
Apastamba says :f " The food eaten ( at a ^Sraddha ) by 
persons related to the giver is a gift offered to gob_ 
lins. It reaches neither the Manes nor the Gods.'' 
A man who tried to curry favor by bestowing ^Srad- 
dhika gifts, was called by an opprobrious name, a 
iSraddha-mitra. % 

Without denying therefore that in later times the 
system of *Sraddhas may have degenerated, I think 
we can perceive that it sprang from a pure source^ 
and, what for our present purpose is even more 
important, from an intelligible source. 

Let us now return to the passage in the Grihya- 

* Apastamba II. 16, 3, Brahma«{is tr ilhavaniy§,rthe. 

t L, c. p. 142, I Manu III. 138, 140, 



VEDA AND VEDAMTA. 249 

stjtras of Asavalyana, where we met for the first 
time with the name of 5raddha. * It was the >Sraddha 
to be given for the sake of the Departed, after his 
ashes had been collected in an urn and buried, This 
xSraddha is called ekoddishta, f or, as we should say, 
personal. It was meant for one person only, not for 
the three ancestors, nor for all the ancestors. Its 
object was in fact to raise the departed to the rank 
of a Pitri, and this had to be achieved by ^raddha 
offerings continued during a whole year. This at 
least is the general, and, most likely, the original 
rule. Apastamba says that the ^raddha for a de- 
ceased relative should be performed every day during 
the year, and that after that a monthly ^Sraddha only 
should be performed or none at all, that is, no more 
personal 5raddha, % because the departed shares hence- 
forth in the regular Prava;^a-i-raddhas. § Sankayana 
says the same, || namely that the personal ^raddhalasts 
for a year, and that then " the Fourth" is dropped, i. e. 
the great-grandfather was dropped, the grandfather 
became the great-grandfather, the father the grand- 
father, while the lately Departed occupied the^father's 
place among the three principal Pitris. ^ This was 



* Ajv. Gr/hya-s\ltras IV. 5, 8. 

§ It is discribed as a vSkri^x of the Parvawa-jraddha in Gobhiliya 
Grihya-sutras, p. loii. 

X One of the differences between the acts before and after the 
Sapi«^ikara«a is noted by Salankayana : — Sapi;zi/ikara«am y§.vad 
rz^udarbhai/^ pitrikriya Sapi«^ikara«ad ardhvawz divigu«air vidhivad 
bhavet. Gobhiliya Gr/hya-sutras, p, 930. 

§ Gobhiliya Gr/hya-sutras, p. 1023. 

II G?'/hya-sntras, ed. Oldenberg, p. Z'^. 

^ A pratyabdikam ekoddish/am on the annivtrsary of the deceased 
is mentienad by Gobhiliya, I. c. p. loii. 



250 ^f^A T CAN INDIA TMACB US f 

called the Sapi«^ikara;^a, i. e. the elevating of the 
departed to the rank of an ancestor. 

There are here, as elsewhere, many exceptions. Go- 
bhiliya allows six months instead of a year, or even a 
Tripaksha,* i. e. three half-months; and lastly, any 
auspicious event (vriddhi) may become the occasion 
of the Sapi;^</Jkara;2a.t ' 

The full number of 5raddhas necessary for the 
Sapindana is sometimes given as sixteen, viz. the 
first, then one in each of the twelve months, then two 
semestral ones, and lastly the Sapindana. But here 
too much variety is allowed, though, if the Sapindana 
takes place before the end of the year, the number 
of sixteen 5raddhas has still to be made up.J 

When the ^raddha is offered on account of an 
auspicious event, such as a birth or a marriage, the 
fathers invoked are not the father, grandfather, and 
great-grandfather, who are sometimes called ai'ru- 
mukha, with tearful faces, but the ancestors before 
them, and they are called nandimukha, or joyful.§ 

Colebrooke,|| to whom we owe an excellent de- 
scription of what a ^Sraddha is in tnodern times, 
took evidently the same view. "The first set of 
funeral ceremonies," he writes, " is adapted to effect, 
by means of oblations, the re-imbodying of the soul 
of the deceased, after burning his corpse. The ap- 
parent scope of the second set is to raise his shade 

* Gobhiliya Gr/hya-sutras, p. 1039. 

t -5'ankh. G^-zhya, p. 83; Gobh. GrzTiya, p. 1024. According to 
some authorities the ekoddish^fa is called nava, new, during ten 
days ; navamj-ra, mixed, for six months ; and pura«a, old, after- 
wards. Gobhiliya Gr/hya-sutras, p. 1020. 

} Gobhiliya, c. p. 1032. 

§ Gobhiliya. 1. c, p. 1047. li Life and Essays, ii, p. 195. 



VEDA AT/D VMDANTA. 



1*51 



from this world, where it would else, according to 
the notions of the Hindus, continue to roam among 
demons and evil spirits, up to heaven, and then 
deify him, as it were, among the manes of de- 
parted ancestors. For this end, a ^raddha should 
regularly be offered to the deceased on the day after 
the mourning expires ; twelve other 6'raddhas singly 
to the deceased in twelve successive months ; similar 
obsequies at the end of the third fortnight, and also 
in the sixth month, and in the twelfth ; and the obla- 
tion called Sapi72^ana on the first anniversary of his 
decease.* At this Sapi;/<^ana ^Sraddha, which is the 
last of the ekoddish/a j-raddha, four funeral cakes 
are offered to the deceased and his three ancestors, 
that consecrated to the deceased being divided into 
three portions and mixed with the other three cakes. 

The portion retained is often offered to the deceased, 
and the act of union and fellowship becomes complete."! 

When this system of .Sraddha, had once been 
started, it seems to have spread very rapidly. We 
soon hear of the monthly »Sraddha, not only in 
memory of one person lately deceased, but as part 
of the Pitr/ya^;1a, and as obligatory, not only on 
householders (agnimat), but on other persons also, 
and, not only on the three upper castes, but even, 

* Colebrooke adds that in most provinces the periods for these six- 
teen ceremonies, and for the concluding obsequies entitled Sapi«i/ana, 
are anticipated, and the whole is completed on the second- t)r third 
day ; after which they are again performed at the proper times, but 
in honor of the whole set of progenitors instead of the deceased singly. 
It is this which Dr. Donner, in his learned paper on the Piw^apit- 
rvj2ighz. (p. ii), takes as the general rule. 

t See this subject most exhaustively treated, particularly in its 
bearings on the law of inheritance, in Rajkumar Sarvadahikri's Tagore 
Law Lectures for 1880, p. 93. 



2 5 2 ^^^ T CAN INDIA TEACH US f 

without hymns, on Sf^dras,* and as to be performed, 
not only on the day of New-Moon, but on other days 
also, t whenever there was an opportunity. Gobhila 
seems to look upon the Pi?2<^apitr/a^;1a as itself a 
5raddha, % and the commentator holds that, even if 
there are no pi?/(/as or cakes, the Brahmans ought 
still to be fed. This ^Sraddha, however, is distin- 
guished from the other, the true -5'raddha, called 
Anvaharya, which follows it, § and which is properly 
known by the name of Parva;2a .Sraddha. 

The same difficulties which confront us when we 
try to form a clear conception of the character of the 
various ancestral ceremonies, were felt by the Brah- 
mans themselves, as may be seen from the long dis- 
cussions in the commentary on the 5raddha-kalpa || 
and from the abusive language used by iTandrakanta 
Tarkalankara against Raghunandana. The question 
with them assumes the form of what is pradhana 
(primary) and what is anga (secondary) in these sac- 
rifices, and the final result arrived at is that sometimes 
the offering of cakes is pradhana, as in the Tinda-pit- 
riya^fia., sometimes the feeding of Brahas only, as in 
the Nitya-jraddha, sometimes both, as in the Sapi;/^- 
ikara/za. 

We may safely say, therefore, that not a day passed 

* Gobhiliya Grihya.-s^itTa.s, p. 892. t L. c. p. 897. 

J See p. 666, and p. 1008. Grzhyaktrak piw^apitr/ya^lasya 
jraddhatvam aha. 

§ Gobhiliya IV. 4, 3, itarad anvah§,ryam. But the commentators 
add, anagner amavasya^raddham, nanvaharyam. According to 
Gobhiliya there ought to be the Vaixvadeva offering and the Bali 
offering at the end of each Pitrvawa-jraddha ; see Gobhiliya Gr/hya- 
sfitras, p. 1005, but no Vaixvadeva at an ckoddish/a jT^ddha, 1. c. p. 
1020. 

Ii L. c. pp. 1005-IGIO ; Nimaayasindhu, p. 27*. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 



253 



in the life of the ancient people of India on which they 
were not reminded of their ancestors, both near and 
distant, and showed their respect for them, partly by 
symbolic offerings to their Manes, partly by charitable 
gifts to deserving persons, chiefly Brahmans. These 
offertories varied from the simplest, such as milk and 
fruits, to the costliest, such as gold and jewels. The 
feasts given to those who were invited to officiate or 
assist at a ^Yaddha seem in some cases to have been 
very sumptuous, * and what is very important, the eat- 
ing of meat, which in later times was strictly forbid- 
den in many sects, must, when the Sutras were writ- 
ten, have been fully recognized at these feasts, even 
to the killing and eating of a cow.t 

This shows that these .Sraddhas, though possibly 
of later date than the Pitnya^as, belong neverthe- 
less to a very early phase of Indian life. And though 
much may have been changed in the outward form 
of these ancient ancestral sacrifices, their original 
solemn character has remained unchanged. Even at 
present, when the worship of the ancient Devas is 
ridiculed by many who still take part in it, the wor- 
ship of the ancestors and the offering of *Sraddbas 
have maintained much of their old sacred character. 
They have sometimes been compared to the " commu- 
nion" in the Christian Church, and it is certainly true 
that many natives speak of their funeral and ances- 
tral ceremonies with a hushed voice and with real 
reverence. They alone seem still to impart to their 

* See Burnell, The Law of Partition, p. 31. 

•^ Kalau tavad gavalamblio mS7?;sadanaz« kdi jr^ddhe nishiddleham, 
Gobhilena tu madhyamash^akayaw? vflstukarmawi ia gavalatnbho 
vihita/z, m&wsaiarus /C-anvash/akyajraddlie ; Gobhiliya Grihya-sutra, 
cd, i^andrakS.nta Tarkalankara, Vi^apati, p. 8, 



254 ^^^ ^ ^^^ INDIA TEACH US^ 

life on earth a deeper significance and a higher pros- 
pect. I could go even a step further and express my 
belief, that the absence of such services for the dead 
and of ancestral commemorations is a real loss in our 
own religion. Almost every religion recognizes them 
as tokens of a loving memory offered to a father, to a 
mother, or even to a child, and though in many coun- 
tries they may have proved a source of superstition, 
there runs through them all a deep well of living human 
faith that ought never to be allowed to perish. The 
early Christian Church had to sanction the ancient 
prayers for the Souls of the departed, and in more 
Southern countries the services on All Saints' and on 
All Souls' Day continue to satisfy a craving of the 
human heart which must be satisfied in every religion. 
We, in the North, shrink from these open manifesta- 
tions of grief, but our hearts know often a deeper bit- 
terness ; nay, there would seem to be a higher truth 
than we at first imagine in the belief of the ancients 
that the souls of our beloved ones leave us no rest, 
unless they are appeased by daily prayers, or better 
still, by daily acts of goodness in remembrance of 
them.* 

But there is still another Beyond that found ex- 
pression in the ancient religion of India. Besides 
the Devas or Gods, and besides the Pitr/s or Fathers, 
there was a third world, without which the ancient 
religion of India could not have become what we see 
it in the Veda. That third Beyond was what the 
poets of the Veda call the Ritd^, and which I believe 
meant originally no more than " the straight line." 
It is applied to the straight line of the sun in its 

* Note L, 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 255 

daily course, to the straight line followed by day and 
night, to the straight line that regulates the seasons, 
to the straight line which, in spite of many moment- 
ary deviations, was discovered to run through the 
whole realm of nature. We call that i?/ta, that 
straight, direct, or right line, when we apply it in a 
more general sense, the Law of Nature ; and when 
we apply it to the moral world, we try to express 
the same idea again by speaking of the Moral Law, 
the law on which our life is founded, the eternal Law 
of Right and Reason, or, it may be, " that which makes 
for righteousness '' both within us and without. * 

And thus, as a thoughtful look on nature led to 
the first perception of bright gods, and in the end of 
a God of light, as love of our parents was transfigured 
into piety and a belief in immortality, a recognition 
of the straight lines in the world without, and in 
the world within, was raised into the highest faith, 
a faith in a law that underlies everything, a law in 
which we may trust, whatever befall, a law which 
speaks within us with the divine voice of conscience, 
and tells us "■ this is r/ta," "this is right," " this is true," 
whatever the statutes of our ancestors, or even the 
voices of our bright gods, may say to the contrary. 

These three Beyonds are the three revelations of 
antiquity ; and it is due almost entirely to the dis- 
covery of the Veda that we, in this nineteenth century 
of ours, have been allowed to watch again these early 
phases of thought and religion, which had passed 
away long before the beginnings of other literatures.! 

* See Hibbert Lectures, new ed. pp. 243-255. 

I In Chinese we find that the same three aspects of religion and 
their intimate relationship were recognized, as, for instance, when 
Confucius says to the Prince of Sung: "Honor the sky (woi ship 



3 ^6 ^ff^ T G^^ INDIA TEA CII US f 

In the.Yeda an ancient cily has been laid bare before 
our eyes which, in the history of all other religions, 
is filled up with rubbish, and built over by new 
architects. Some of the earliest and most instructive 
scenes of our distant childhood have risen once more 
above the horizon of our memory which, until thirty 
or forty^ years ago, seemed to have vanished for ever. 

Only a few words more to indicate at least how 
this religious growth in India contained at the same 
time the germs of Indian philosophy. Philosophy in 
India is» what it ought to be, not the denial, but the 
fulfilment of religion ; it is the highest religion, and 
the oldest name of the oldest system of philosophy 
in India is V e d a n t a, that is, the end, the goal, the 
highest object of the Veda. 

Let us return once more to that ancient theologian 
who lived in the fifth century b. c, and who told us 
that^ even before his time, all the gods had been dis- 
covered to be but three gods, the gods of the Earth, 
the gods of the Airi and the gods of the Sky, invoked 
under various names. The same writer tells us that 
in reality there is but 07te God, but he does not call 
him the Lord, or the highest God, the Creator, Ruler 
and Preserver of all things, but he calls him A t m a n, 
THE Self. The one Atman or Self, he says, is praised 
in many ways owing to the greatness of the godhead. 
And he then goes on to say : " The other gods are 
but so many members of the one Atman, Self, and 
thus it has been said that the poets compose their 

of Devas)',, reverence the Manes (worship of Pitr/s) ; if you do this 
sun and moon will keep their appointed time (/v'/ta)." Happel, 
Altchinesische Reichsreligion, p. II. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA, ^ ^ 257 

praises according to the mutiplicity of the nat6res of 
the beings whom they praise." 

It is true, no doubt, that this is the language of a 
philosophical theologian, not of an ancient poet. Yet 
these philosophical reflections belong to the fifth cen- 
tury before our era, if not to an earlier date ; and the 
first germs of such thoughts may be discovered in 
some of the Vedic hymns also. I have quoted already 
from the hymns such passages as *■ — ^^" They speak of 
Mitra, Varu;/a, Agni ; then he is the heavenly bird 
Garutmat ; that which is and is one the poets call in 
various ways ; they speak of Yama, Agni, Mdtam- 



van.'' 



In another hymn, in which the sun is likened to a 
bird, we read : " Wise poets represent by their words 
the bird who is one, in many ways." f 

All this is still tinged with mythology ; but there 
are other passages from which a purer light beams 
upon us, as when one poet asks : $ 

" Who saw him when he was first born, when he 
who has no bones bore him who has bones 1 Where 
was the breath, the blood, the Self of the world .'' 
Who went to ask this from any that knew it .-* " 

Here, too, the expression is still helpless, but 
though the flesh is weak, the spirit is very willing. 
The expression " He who has bones" is mea.nt for 
that which has assumed consistency and form, the Vis- 
ible, as opposed to that which has no bones, rto Body, 
no form, the Invisible, while "breath, blood, and self 
of the world " are but so many attempts at finding 

* Rig-veda I, 164, 46 ; Hibbert Lectures, p. 311. 
I Rig-veda II. 114, 5 ; Hibbert Lectures, p. 313, 
X Rig-veda I. 164,4. 



258 WHAT CAN Il^DIA TEACH us f 

names and concepts for what is by necessity incon- 
ceivable, and therefore unnameable. 

In the second period of Vedic literature, in the so- 
called Brahma/^as, and more particularly in wliat is> 
called the Upanishads, or the Vedanta portion, these 
thoughts advance to perfect clearness and definite- 
ness. Here the development of religious thought 
which took its beginning in the hymns, attains to its 
fulfilment. The circle becomes complete. Instead 
of comprehending the One by many names, the many 
names are now comprehended to be the One. The^ 
old names are openly discarded ; even such titles as 
Pra_;/apati, lord of creatures, Vii"vakarman, maker of 
all things, Dahtr/, creator, are put aside as inadequate.. 
The name now used is an expression of nothing but * 
the purest and highest subjectiveness, — it is At m an,, 
the Self, far more abstract than our Ego. — the Self of 
all things, the Self of all the old mythological gods — - 
for they were not mere names, but names intended' 
for something — lastly, the Self in which each individ- 
ual self must find rest, must come to himself, must 
find his own true Self. 

You may remember that I spoke to you in my first 
lecture of a boy who insisted on being sacrificed by 
his father, and who, when he came to Yama, the 
ruler of the departed, was granted three boons, and 
who then requested, as his third boon, that Yama 
should tell him what became of man after death.. 
That dialogue forms part of one of the Upanishads^ 
it belongs to the Vedanta, the end of the Veda, the 
highest aim of the Veda. I shall read you a few ex- 
tracts from it. 

Yama, the King of the Departed, says : 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 259 

" Men who are fools, dwelling in ignorance, though 
■wise in their own sight, and puffed up with vain 
knowledge, go round and round, staggering to and 
fro, like blind led by the bHnd. 

*' The future never rises before the eyes of the 
careless child, deluded by the delusions of wealth. 
This is the world, he thinks ; there is no other ; thus 
he falls again and again under my sway (the sway of 
death). 

" The wise, who by means of meditating on his Self 
recognizes the Old (the old man within) who is diffi- 
cult, to see, who has entered into darkness, who is 
hidden in the cave, who dwells in the abyss, as God, 
he indeed leaves joy and sorrow far behind. 

" That Self, the Knower, is not born, it dies not ; it 
came from nothing, it never became anything. The 
Old man is unborn, from everlasting to everlasting ; 
he is not killed, though the body be killed. 

" That Self is smaller than small, greater than 
great ; hidden in the heart of the creature. A man 
who has no mbre desires and no more griefs, sees the 
majesty of the Self by the grace of the creator. 

" Though sitting still, he walks far : though lying 
-down, he goes everywhere. Who save myself is able 
to know that God, who rejoices, and rejoices not.? 

" That Self cannot be gained by the Veda ; nor by 
the understanding, nor by much learning. He whom 
the Self chooses, by him alone the Self can be gained. 

" The Self chooses him as his own. But he who 
has not first turned away from his wickedness, who 
is not calm and subdued, or whose mind is not at rest, 
he can never obtain the Self, even by knowledge. 

" No mortal lives by the breath that goes up and 



2 6 o ^^A T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? 

by the breath that goes down. We live by another^ 
in whom both repose. 

" Well then, I shall tell thee this mystery, the 
eternal word (Brahman), and what happens to the 
6"^^, after reaching death. 

" Some are born again, as living beings, others 
enter into stocks and stones, according to their 
work, and according to their knowledge. 

" But he, the Highest Person, who wakes in us 
while we are asleep, shaping one lovely sight after 
another, he indeed is called the Light, he is called- 
Brahman, he alone is called the Immortal. All 
worlds are founded on it, and no one goes beyond.. 
This is that. 

"As the one fire, after it has entered the world,, 
though one, becomes different according to what it 
burns, thus the One Self within all things, becomes 
different, according to whatever it enters, but it ex- 
ists also apart. 

" As the sun, the eye of the world, is not contami- 
nated by the external impurities seen by the eye,, 
thus the One Self within all things is never con- 
taminated by the sufferings of the world, being him- 
self apart. 

*' There is one eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal 

thoughts ; he, though one, fulfils the desires of many. 
The wise who perceive Him within their Self, to 
them belongs eternal life, eternal peace."* 

"Whatever there is, the whole world, when gone 
forth (from Brahman), trembles in his breath. That 
Brahman is a great terror, like a drawn sword. Those 
who know it, become immortal. 

* To 8k q)p6vfj/ia zov Ttvevjiiaroi ^aor) Hal, eipr'fVTj, See also 
Ruskin, Sesame p. 63. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA^::-^ .261 

*^ He (Brahman) cannot be reached, by speecb;, by 
mind, or by the eye. He cannot be apprehended,' ex- 
cept by him who says, //i? 2i". ' ' 

"When all desires that dwell in the heart cease, 
then the mortal becomes immortal, and obtains 
Brahman. 

" When all the fetters of the heart here on earth 
are broken, when all that binds us to this life is un- 
done, then the mortal becomes immortal :-— -here ^my 
teachings end." 

This is what is called Vedanta, the Veda-end, the 
end of the Veda, and this is the religion or the philo- 
sophy, whichever you like to call it, that has lived 
on from about 500 B.C. to the present day. If the 
people of India can be said to have now any system 
of religion at all, — ajDart from their ancestral isacri^ 
fices and their wSraddhas, and apart from mere caste- 
observances,-^it is to be found in the Vedanta .philo- 
sophy, the leading tenets of which are known to spme 
extent in every village.* That great revival of religion, 
which was inaugurated some fifty years ago by Ram- 
Mohun Roy, and is now known as the Brahma-.Sama^, 
under the leadership of my noble friend Keshub 
Chunder Sen, was chiefly founded on the Upanishads, 
and was Vedantic in spirit. There is, in fact, 
an unbroken continuity between the most modern and 
the most ancient phrases of Hindu thought, extending 
over more than three thousand years. 

To the present day India acknowledges no higher 
authority in matters of religion, ceremonial, customs, 
and law than the Veda, and so long as India is India, 

* Major Jacob, Manual of Hindu Pantheism, Preface, 



26 2 WHA T CA N INDIA TEA CH US f 

nothing will extinguish that ancient spirit of VedSnt- 
ism which is breathed by every Hindu from hi« 
earliest youth, and pervades in various forms the 
prayers even of the idolater, the speculations of the 
philosopher, and the proverbs of the beggar. 

For purely practical reasons therefore, — I mean for 
the very practical object of knowing something of the 
secret springs which determine the character, the 
thoughts and deeds, of the lowest as well as of the 
highest amongst the people in India, — an acquaint- 
ance with their religion, which is founded on the 
Veda, and with their philosophy, which is founded 
on the Vedanta, is highly desirable. 

It is easy to make light of this, and to ask, as some 
statesmen have asked, even in Europe, What has 
religion, or what has philosophy, to do with politics ? 
In India, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, 
and notwithstanding the indifference on religious mat- 
ters so often paraded before the world by the Indians 
themselves, religion, and philosophy too, are great 
powers still. Read the account that has lately been 
published of two native statesmen, the administrators 
of two first-class states in Saurash/ra, Junagadh and 
Bhavnagar, Gokulaji and Gaurij-ankara, * and you 
will see whether the Vedanta is still a moral and a 
political power in India or not. 

* Life and Letters of Gokulaji Sampattirama Zala and his views 
of the Vedanta, by Manassukharama Saryarama Tripa///i Bombay, 1881. 

As a young man Gokulaji, the son of a good family, learnt 
Persian and Sanskrit. His chief interest in life, in the midst of a 
most successful political career, was the "Vedanta." A little 
insight, we are told, into this knowledge turned his heart to 
higher objects, promising him freedom from grief, and blessedness, 
the highest aim of all. This was the turning-point of his inner 
life. When the celebrated Vedanti anchorite, Rama Bava, visited 
Jun%adh, Gokulaji became his pupil. When another anchorite. 



VEDA AND VEDANTA. 26^ 

But I claim even more for the Vedanta, and I 
recommend its study, not only to the Candidates for 
the Indian Civil Service, but to all tru6 students of 
philosophy. It will bring before them a view of life, 
-different from all other views of life which are placed 
before us in the History of Philosophy. You saw 
bow behind all the Devas^ or gods, the authors of the 
Upanisbads discovered the Atman or Self. Of that 
Self they predicated three things only, that it is, that 
it perceives, and that it enjoys eternal bliss. All 
other predicates were negative : it is not this, it is 
hot. that — -it is beyond anything that we can conceive 
or name. 

But that Self, that Highest Self, the Paramatman, 
could be discovered after a severe moral and intel- 
lectual discipline only, and those who had not yet- 
<liscovered it, were allowed to worship lower gods, 
and to employ more poetical names to satisfy their 
human wants. Those who knew the other orods to 
be but names or persons — personae or masks, in the 
true sense of the word — Pratikas, as they call them in 
Sanskrit — knew also that those who worshipped these 
names or persons, worshipped in truth the Highest 
Self, though ignorantly. This is a most character- 
istic feature in the religious history of India. Even 
in the Bhagavadgita, a rather popular and exoteric 
exposition of Vedantic doctrines, the Supreme Lord 

Paramahansa SaZ'/{'idananda, passed through Junagadh on a pil- 
grimage to Girnar, Gokulaji was regularly initiated in the secrets 
of the Vedanta. He soon became highly proficient in it, and 
through the whole course of his life, whether in power or in dis- 
grace, his belief in the doctrines of the Vedanta supported him, 
and made him, in the opinion of English statesmen, the model of 
what a native statesman ought to be. 



264 ^^^'^ CAW INDIA TEACH US f 

or Bhagavat himself is introduced as saying : "Even 
those who worship idols, worship me." * 
. But that was not all. As behind the names of 
Agni, Indra, and Pra^apati, and behind all the .myth- 
ology of nature, the ancient sages of India had dis^ 
covered the Atman — let us call it the objective Self- — 
they perceived also behind the veil of the body, behind 
the senses, behind the mind, and behind our reason 
(in fact behind the mythology of the soul, which we 
often call psychology), another Atman, or the sub- 
jective Self. That Self, too, was to be discovered by 
a severe moral and intellectual discipline only, and 
those who wished to find it, who wished to know, net 
themselves, but their Self, had to cut far deeper than 
the senses, or the mind, or the reason, or the ordinary 
Ego. All these too were D e v a s, bright apparitions- 
mere names — yet names meant for something. Much 
that was most dear, that had seemed for a time their 
very self, had to be surrendered, before they could 
find the Self, of Selves, the Old Man, the Looker-on, 
a subject independent of all personality, an existence- 
independent of all life. 

* Professor Kuenen discovers a similar idea in the words placed' 
in the mouth of Jehovah by the prophet Malachi, i. 14 : *' For 
lam a great king, and my name is feared among the heathen." 
*'The reference," he says, " is distinctly to the adoration already offered 
to Yahvveh by the people, whenever they serve their own gods with 
true reverence and honest zeal. Even in Deuteronomy the ador- 
ation of these other gods by the nations is represented as a dis- 
pensation of Yahweh. Malachi goes- a step farther, and accepts 
their worship as a tribute which in reality falls to Yahweh, — to 
Him, the Only True. Thus the opposition between Yahweh and 
the other gods, and afterwards between the one true God and the 
iniaginary gods, makes room here for the still higher conceptioa 
that the adoration of Yahweh is the essence and the truth of all' 
religion." Hibbert Lectures, p. 181. 



VEDA AiVJD VEDANTA., ■: 2-6$ 

When that point had been reached, then the 
highest knowledge began to dawn, the Self within 
(the Pratyagatman) was drawn towards the Highest 
Self (the Paramatman), it found its true self in the 
Highest Self, and the oneness of the subjective with 
the objective Self was recognized as underlying all 
reality, as the dim dream of religion,— as the pure 
light of philosophy. 

This fundamental idea is worked out with syste- 
matic completeness in the Vedanta philosophy, and 
no one who can appreciate the lessons contained in 
Berkeley's philosophy, will read the Upanishads and 
the Brahma-sutras and their commentaries without 
feeling a richer and a wiser man. 

I admit that it requires patience, discrimination 
and a certain amount of self-denial before we can 
discover the grains of solid gold in the dark mines of 
Eastern philosophy. It is far easier and far more amus- 
ing for shallow critics to point out what is absurd and 
ridiculous in the religion and philosophy of the ancient 
world than for the earnest student to discover truth 
and wisdom under strange disguises. Some progress 
however has been made, even during the short span 
of life that we can remember. The Sacred Books of 
the East are no longer a mere butt for the invectives 
of missionaries or the sarcasms of philosophers. They 
have at last been recognized as historical documents, 
aye, as the most ancient documents in the history of 
the human mind and as palaeontological records of an 
evolution that begins to elicit wider and deeper sympa- 
thies than the nebular formation of the planet on which 
we dwell for a season, or the organic development of 
that chrysalis which we call man. 



266 ^^^ T CAN INDIA TEA CH US ? 

If you think that I exaggerate, let me read you in 
conclusion what one of the greatest philosophical 
critics — and certainly not a man given to admiring the 
thoughts of others — says of the Vedanta, and more 
particularly of the Upanishads. Schopenhauer writes: 

" In the whole world there is no study so beneficial 
and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has 
been the solace of my life — it will be the solace of my 
death."* 

I have thus tried, so far as it was possible in one 
course of lectures, to give you some idea of ancient In- 
dia, of its ancient literature, and, more particularly 
of its ancient religion. My object was, not merely to 
place names and facts before you, these you can find 
in many published books, but, if possible, to make you 
see and feel the general human interests that are in- 
volved in that ancient chapter of the history of the 
human race. I wished that the Veda and its religion 
and philosophy should not only seem to you curious or 
strange, but that you should feel that there was in 
them something that concerns ourselves, something 
of our own intellectual growth, some recollections, 
as it were, of our own childhood, or at least of the child- 
hood of our own race. I feel convinced that, placed 
as we are here in this life we have lessons to learn 
from the Veda, quite as important as the lessons we 
learn at school from Homer and Virgil, and lessons 
from the Vedanta quite as instructive as the systems 
of Plato or Spinoza. 

I do not mean to say that everybody who wishes 
to know how the human race came to be what it is, 

* Sacred Books of the East, vol. i., The Upanishads, translated hj 
M. M. ; Introduction, p. Ixi. 



:. . VEDA AND VEDANTA. 267 

hotv language came to be what it is, how religion 
came to be what it is, how manners, customs, laws^ 
and forms of government came to be what they are, 
how we ourselves came to be what we are, must 
learn Sanskrit, and must study Vedic Sanskrit. But I 
do believe that not to know what a study of Sanskrit^ 
and particularly a study of the Veda, has already 
done for illuminating the darkest passages in the 
history of the human mind, of that mind on which 
w^e ourselves are feeding and living, is a misfortune, 
or, at all ev-ents, a loss, just as I should count it a 
loss to have passed through life without knowing 
something, however little, of the geological formation 
of the earth, or of the sun, and the moon, and the 
stars,— and of the thought, or the will, or the law 
that govern their movements. 



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